One thing to remember is who your target is. Lets look at an example that I had to deal with about a week ago: The company I work for is having a pretty large

One thing to remember is who your target is. Lets look at an example that I had to deal with about a week ago: The company I work for is having a pretty large event coming up, something that our customers would most likely be very interested in. My boss's reaction was that we should grab the email addresses that we have harvested from our website (signups require an email address), and send those people an email telling them about the event. I'm sure that the majority of you can predict what my reaction to this was...something along the lines of "No, that is spam, that is bad, part of my job is preventing exactly the type of email you want to send out from making it onto our network. By harvesting email addresses from our website you are violating our customers trust; spam spam spam, BAD!" Naturally, the PHBs did not understand this and, despite my best efforts to stop them, they ended up sending the spam (although I forced them to use a different mail server than we use for sending mails). After much anger, and much thinking, I have come to a conclusion about this. I have changed my mind. Now...I, as a geek/admin, DESPISE the sorts of mass mailings that they sent out, but why? I hate them because I hear "mass mail" and immediately think "0mG G3t V14GRA N0W!", something that I hate. I know the sorts of slimey tactics that spammers use to evade spam filters, and actively fight against them. The "problem" is that the majority of my dislike for "mass mailings" are technical. I hate them because they are not what the email system was intended for, and because they are a pain in my ass. You know what, though, they're things that most of our customers want to hear. Looking through my email box, I see that there are some things (mailing lists, google's newsgroup summary emails that come every day telling me what happened in comp.sys.ibm.as400.misc that day, emails from a website called steapandcheap [like woot, but for outdoor gear], backup confirmation emails etc.) that are automated, and might seem evil at first (the commercial stuff like steapandcheap especially) but are actually things that I WANT to see. Where am I going with all of this? There is a good chance that your hatred for the sorts of tactics he describes here come from your nature as a geek. The unfortunate reality is that the majority of users just simply don't care. Look at things like myspace, look at success stories like that 15 year old girl that is making 7 figures with her website that does myspace layouts (err..I think she is like 19 now...she was talked about in the 30 woman web entrepreneurs making big $$ article the other day), look at facebook applications like honesty box, these things are HORRIFYINGLY bad from the perspective of a geek. But to a normal person, to the type of person that is keeping the "Click here for a FREE iPoD!" advertisers in business, and to the type of person you're probably trying to attract, these things that we might find "obnoxious", they find useful. It is a sad reality, but it is a reality nonetheless.