<story><title>Email, an idea so old that it&apos;s new</title><url>http://blog.bitofnews.com/email-an-idea-so-old-that-its-new/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>timrosenblatt</author><text>&amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s easy to unsubscribe with one click. If people didn&amp;#x27;t want it, they would have unsubscribed&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Be careful with this assumption. It might surprise you how many people won&amp;#x27;t bother to click unsubscribe (no matter how obvious you make the option) b&amp;#x2F;c they just click &amp;quot;spam&amp;quot;. I have friends who have been caught by this one in the past.</text></item><item><author>xux</author><text>Good thoughts and I agree! The overloading of email is a huge problem, and no one wants more junk. So it comes down to receiving things that you really want.&lt;p&gt;With Bit of News, it&amp;#x27;s easy to unsubscribe with one click. If people didn&amp;#x27;t want it, they would have unsubscribed. At least that&amp;#x27;s what I would do.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve found that people tend to like emails that they expect, and dislike the ones that are out of the blue. If you expect it everyday, it&amp;#x27;s a pleasure instead of an annoyance.</text></item><item><author>devindotcom</author><text>I personally like email because I don&amp;#x27;t usually have to deal with the worst of it, but the argument that it&amp;#x27;s useful because we all use it seems... incomplete. We all have addresses, should we be sending more mail? We all have pens, should we switch to longhand? Email is good for some stuff but not other stuff, no need to oversell it as a platform it was never meant to be and never will be.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>CodeMage</author><text>That was my knee-jerk reaction too, until I actually clicked on the link to Bit of News page. It&amp;#x27;s very simple and straightforward. It says &amp;quot;Daily 60 sec news summary in your inbox&amp;quot; and asks you to enter your e-mail address to subscribe.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been in a lot of situations where I gave out my e-mail address to some site because I needed to have them let me know about something specific and then I started receiving unrelated stuff from them. That&amp;#x27;s what I would call a form of spam. But receiving periodic content you explicitly signed up for? I personally can&amp;#x27;t find a reason to call that spam.&lt;p&gt;If there&amp;#x27;s anyone who decides to subscribe to this and then later can&amp;#x27;t be bothered to unsubscribe, that&amp;#x27;s really their own problem.</text></comment>
<story><title>Email, an idea so old that it&apos;s new</title><url>http://blog.bitofnews.com/email-an-idea-so-old-that-its-new/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>timrosenblatt</author><text>&amp;quot;it&amp;#x27;s easy to unsubscribe with one click. If people didn&amp;#x27;t want it, they would have unsubscribed&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Be careful with this assumption. It might surprise you how many people won&amp;#x27;t bother to click unsubscribe (no matter how obvious you make the option) b&amp;#x2F;c they just click &amp;quot;spam&amp;quot;. I have friends who have been caught by this one in the past.</text></item><item><author>xux</author><text>Good thoughts and I agree! The overloading of email is a huge problem, and no one wants more junk. So it comes down to receiving things that you really want.&lt;p&gt;With Bit of News, it&amp;#x27;s easy to unsubscribe with one click. If people didn&amp;#x27;t want it, they would have unsubscribed. At least that&amp;#x27;s what I would do.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve found that people tend to like emails that they expect, and dislike the ones that are out of the blue. If you expect it everyday, it&amp;#x27;s a pleasure instead of an annoyance.</text></item><item><author>devindotcom</author><text>I personally like email because I don&amp;#x27;t usually have to deal with the worst of it, but the argument that it&amp;#x27;s useful because we all use it seems... incomplete. We all have addresses, should we be sending more mail? We all have pens, should we switch to longhand? Email is good for some stuff but not other stuff, no need to oversell it as a platform it was never meant to be and never will be.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>keule</author><text>I agree! There are also a lot of spam-mailers that use their unsubscribe link just to confirm that the email adress actually belongs to a human. Thats why I tend to ignore the unsubscribe button, when the mail looks fishy.</text></comment>