Tuesday, April 22, 2003

Perspective: A mosaic of new opportunities | CNET News.com

Perspective: A mosaic of new opportunities | CNET News.com • Most people now use browsers to pull information from the Internet or visit Web sites to check what's new. In the future, virtually every Internet information and transaction provider will expose a broad array of events--such as the availability of news or messages--that can be subscribed to using standard protocols. Higher-level subscription aggregation services will automatically filter and prioritize incoming events according to programmed criteria.

Internet Is Losing Ground in Battle Against Spam

Internet Is Losing Ground in Battle Against Spam The microscopic cost of sending e-mail, compared with the price of postal mailings, allows senders to make money on products bought by as little as one recipient for every 100,000 e-mail messages. Internet marketing companies typically charge $500 to $2,000 to send a solicitation to a million in-boxes, but the cost goes up if the list is from a reputable source or is focused on people in certain favored demographic groups. Sending the same offer to a million people by mail costs at least $40,000 for a list, $190,000 for bulk-rate postage and more for paper and printing.

The economics points to spam being around longer than I certainly would like, but talk about a business opportunity on both sides of the equation...