Posts Tagged ‘email’

I submitted this to Threadless.com and got knocked back.

A friend of mine – who is about my age – asked me recently what ‘tweeting’ is. I gave him the stock, Twitter-approved answer that every tweet is an answer to the question, “What are you doing right now?”. My friend then asked me what blogging is, then wondered how such a big internet could fit down those really thin phone lines.*

I’m going to go out on a limb here and tell you now that I like Twitter. I like being able to see what my friends are doing, and tell them in return what inane shite I find interesting right this second. Considering mobile phones and text messages didn’t become commonplace until well after I left university, my acceptance of this culture of being socially visible has been nothing short of startling.

I disagree with Daniel, who states that Twitter began as a “medium of communication for lazy bloggers and self-important narcissists three years ago”. I also disagree that dead bloggers are a bad thing. I find it genuinely impressive that the deceased find the time and energy to tweet regularly. However, I do agree that Twitter has since been hijacked by the lazy bloggers and narcissists, although I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing. What infuriates me is how, as Daniel points out, Twitter has become just another marketing tool.

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Unlike Abbey, Ben knew to just cut and run

Geoff was wrong. We’re not past this. Instead of one or two people illuminating themselves in the bright light of professional idiocy, we have an entire solar event of screwups: one that wasn’t begun with Abbey and that won’t end with the Facebook girl.

It’s less than a day since the latest Facebook career disaster and already we have another contender for the crown of ‘prize tit’, this time provided by the IRC quote site Bash.org.

Just remember: the internet is only a great way to hide your identity if you don’t fill in your personal details.

The following “oops I can’t believe somebody actually wrote and sent that” email arrived in my inbox today. I removed the addresses & contact details, and here it is for your enjoyment on a Friday. Read from the bottom up for a lesson hard learned on insulting customers!

So what do you think – should Abbey Sherwell be saved?

Yes – or – No

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Learn the words, otherwise you're going to fail. It really is that simple.

The English language is not fragile. It is not a delicate flower. It is not to be tiptoed around. It is a robust, industrial framework; a machine made of millions of interlocking parts. This machine is incredibly versatile: it can be disconnected and reconfigured and put to work in billions of variations. It is the backbone of our civilisation: the a reason why England was once such a colonial powerhouse, and why America is what it is today.

I will never understand why some people can’t be arsed to learn the bloody language.

Some disclaimers before I get into this. I am not talking about foreigners for whom English is a second language. I am not talking about the difference between American English and British English – frankly, these differences only came about because the Yanks used to be better at spelling than us. I’m not even talking about the more complicated intricacies and idiosyncracies of the language. I’m not Lynne Truss. For a start, I’ve got a sense of proportion.

I’m talking about the fucking native nob rabbits who flat-out abuse our mother tongue, and who can’t be bothered to learn any of the words.

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Do you need a fast, easy way of communicating your product to an enthusiastic, hungry consumer base? Does your customer base not even know that it wants – nay, needs – your product? We’re here today to talk about spam: a marketing movement so underground that Saatchi & Saatchi won’t even consider it for their major clients. And, we ask, why not? Spam nowadays has become an industry far removed from its sordid roots as a pseudo-meat product.

The economic benefits of spam emailing are often overlooked, despite countries such as Nigeria (and, these days, Jamaica) building an entire economic future on the medium. Indeed, email clients also overlook the enthusiasm of the buying public: in ninety-five percent of our tests, our email client opened directly into our main inbox, and not into our spam folders.

So how does one go about attracting new business through the spam marketing technique? We look at five of the best spam emails, gathered through a painstaking trawl through my email spam folder a few minutes ago.

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