Talking With The Inventor Of Spam
from the proud-papa dept
I remember being on Usenet in 1994 and seeing the "Green Card Lottery" spam posting on a few of the newsgroups I read. At the time, I was confused, because this Green Card Lottery had nothing to do with any of those groups I read. Plus, it was already something of a taboo to "cross post", even when the post was somewhat on topic. Even more, though, I remember the instant backlash that everyone had to the posting - which was done by the (now infamous) Canter and Siegel. It's been almost eight years since that famous "first spam" was sent out, and News.com has and interview with Canter, where he talks about how successful it was. He doesn't seem too concerned with what he did. He points out that it was a very effective method of advertising - and he doesn't think it's as bad as spam email, since it was just to newsgroups, instead of email. He also mentions that while he doesn't use spam for marketing any more, he might in the future.
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