On 3 May 1978Gary
Thuerk, a marketing manager at Digital Equipment Corp,
sent an invitation to the several thousand people on Arpanet,
inviting them to come and see DEC's latest and greatest kit, thus
spawning internet spam and a business worth billions of
dollars.
Leading outsourced mail "cleansing" firm
MessageLabs
said its statistics collected in March showed 75% of more than 4.8
billion messages a day were spam.
Back in 1978 Thuerk was reviled and admired in almost equal
measure. Since then, spam has become the majority of email
messages, but "permission-based marketing", i.e spam that you agree
to receive, has become the world's most sophisticated and
measureable marketing medium.
It has also led to browser behaviour profiling and subsequent
delivery of targeted advertising. Although not delivered by email,
targeted advertising offered by Google and other's is spam in all
but name.
So, Larry and Brin at Google, it would be just if you put
the father of
spam on your front page on 3 May. You owe it all to him.