Technology and (many) other things
Sometimes a movie or book touches you deeply. Here is a movie based on an immigrant theme that really struck a cord with me.
I saw this movie recently on a plane trip to India. Haaz Sleiman’s acting as Tarek, an illegal immigrant from Syria, is wonderful. He gives the character a very energetic and high-pitched feel.
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In case you want to see the movie, here is a link to the DVD on Amazon.
I am checking an email account that has not been used for the past few months. The inbox had a preponderance of emails from New York & Company. I have received 19 emails in April from them. Ditto for March. I wonder what their click through and unsubscribe rates look like, given this spamming.
I was trying to get some traffic stats and I went to Compete.com to get it. The links on the home page were not working and so I decided to register. They asked me some prickly questions:
I was a bit unnerved about being asked for these tidbits, but since I wanted the data, I continued with the registeration. After the registeration, I checked my account options. It turned out that they decided to sign me up for their newsletters, without asking for my permission.
So they are follwing an auto opt-in strategy. I had to take myself off their emails.
While start-ups need traffic, I think its unethical to sign-up users on email lists without asking their permission. When a company adopts this approach, it runs the risk of getting caught by spam blockers. Its much easier to press the “report spam” button (in Gmail for example) than it is to unsubscribe. Overall, an unhealthy approach to increasing traffic.
