Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam…
Adds Irvine: “These were fertile spawning grounds of much that is good and much that is bad about today's Internet. It was easy to post one message to multiple Usenet news groups, thus the beginnings of the terminology 'spam' when referring to unwanted marketing messages.”
Well, alrighty then. It would seem that “spam” is really an acronym: SPAM. Ah, but there are others, grasshopper, who would tell you differently. Jim Meskauskus is one of them.
According to Meskauskus, president of Media Darwin in New York, using the word “spam” to describe the feeling of being overrun with unwanted communications was lifted directly from the Monty Python skit. The infamous “Canter and Siegel Green Card” posting in April of 1994 was the genesis of the Python reference, he says.
Canter and Siegel were two lawyers offering “free” information via email to foreign-born persons wishing to register for the upcoming green card lottery. Word has it these enterprising young men hired a programmer to write a script which posted the offer to every news group at the time. The outcry from Usenet users was swift, and the message was thus branded with the “spam” label.
As Meskauskus says, “In the skit, the word spam is said repeatedly and ceaselessly to everyone's chagrin. So it is that unsolicited email seemed to come to one's inbox over and over again.”
So, who's right? Does email “spam” come from the Monty Python skit? Does it really stand for “Simultaneously Posted Advertising Message?”
In need of clarification, Jerry Black, an associate media director at Publicis & Hal Riney in San Francisco, brought to this reporter's attention an entire Web site dedicated to documenting spam's development on the Net. Brad Templeton has amassed an impressive history of spam.
A quick perusal of Templeton's study will tell you that spam's rise in popularity as an Internet terminology remains as mysterious as what really goes into a can of the eponymous meat product.
To the list of great dichotomous debates of the world, the “Mets vs. Yankees,” the “Sharks vs. Jets,” “Pete Best vs. Ringo Starr,” the “tastes great vs. less filling,” so too must we add “Spam vs. Python.”
Next column's topic: Getting the most out of conferences. In these days of spandex-tight marketing budgets, attendees need tips on extracting the greatest benefit from conferences. Question: How do you bring back the most presentations, business cards, industry insights and potential leads these days?
Send your tips on how you justify the boss-person unleashing you for days at a time in an unsupervised environment! Please email to: lkmitrovich@yahoo.com. (Your identity can be protected if you so wish.)