Comments on: Feedburner Spams Bloggers

By: Duncan Riley

Duncan Riley — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 02:25:45 +0000

Apologies, Stuart Bruce isn’t with Feedster, apology accepted. I’ll leave Stuart’s little missive for another day :-)

By: Cary

Cary — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 01:34:37 +0000

Totally agree with you there, Duncan…I myself may be willing to look past it because of past experience, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t spam.

I don’t think Stuart’s attempt to re-write the definition of “spam” is going to win him many friends ;)

By: Duncan Riley

Duncan Riley — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 00:11:36 +0000

I think the difference to note here was the lack of personalisation. If I’d received a “Dear Duncan, love the Blog Herald, have you seen our company, we might me able to help” style email I would have accepted it as fair, marketing.

As for Stuarts comment on his blog:
“Spam is the rubbish about unwanted pharmaceuticals, knock-off software and disgusting websites. An unsolicited email about a service in my sphere of interest is legitimate direct marketing.”

Wrong, spam is spam in any sphere. It was unsolicited, bulk sent and Feedster didn’t even try to disguise the fact. However I accpet that you guys have owed up to making a mistake, but attacking me for “getting it wrong” doesn’t really make the apology seem genuine now does it?

By: Cary

Cary — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 19:38:40 +0000

I personally think Dick’s explanation rings fairly true…sounds like a slip-up, and certainly not the end of the world â€“ as long as they don’t do it again.

I may be biased though, because about 6-months ago Dick helped me figure out why my FeedBurner feeds weren’t getting indexed at Technorati, in spite of the fact that it was a Technorati issue and not a FeedBurner issue (Technorati, of course, didn’t answer my e-mails.)

Anyways, I feel I owe him one. Seems like an all around stand-up guy to me :)

By: Dick Costolo

Dick Costolo — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 17:27:07 +0000

I’ll take matt’s comment one step further. We should never have sent that email to you. We pride ourselves on being very entrepreneurial at FeedBurner and we pride ourselves on being open, democratic, and human, by which I mean that we let everybody attack their projects and work in the manner they think best. Obviously, sending unsolicited email to a customer is not our style, and it won’t happen again. Great companies have a style and a culture that they own, but people working at the company can’t be expected to intuit the company culture, it has to be discussed and communicated and felt. That way, decisions about how to attack a problem can be “felt” without having long lists of do’s and don’ts, rules and regulations. This email you received highlights a lack of understanding of the company culture across the entire team. I take personal responsibility for that, and I’m on it.

By: Hexxenn

Hexxenn — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 17:16:38 +0000

I find it strange that Feedburner would feel the need to spam people, considering they seem to be pretty well-known to bloggers.

By: Tank

Tank — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 16:49:57 +0000

I don’t know if I would call it spam, it’s pretty close but from the sounds of it they’re using a dedicated list to send unsolicited mail rather than just blasting it out to everyone and their uncle.

I’m not entirely sure that this is a good sign for feedburner to be giving out to the blogging world, could spell financial difficulty of they’re using direct marketing to increase their numbers rather than being a bit more subtle about it.

By: Matt Shobe

Matt Shobe — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 16:07:37 +0000

Hello,

As our VP of Business Development Rick Klau posted here, http://www.stuartbruce.biz/2006/02/blog_herald_get.html, this wasn’t the best approach we could have taken, and we are sorry for any inconvenience or frustration this approach might have caused its recipients. We are reconsidering and tweaking various approaches to marketing our services, and appreciate the community’s feedback as it helps us know when we’re doing a good job or missing the mark.

By: Amanda Rush

Amanda Rush — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 15:17:54 +0000

Direct marketing is spam unless it’s specifically opted into.
If Duncan didn’t opt in, it’s spam.
I’d even be willing to suggest that it qualifies as spam if the opt-in/out process isn’t clearly defined in some way.
Junk is junk, no matter where it comes from or how it gets to you.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 08 Feb 2006 15:04:20 +0000

Spoken like a true spammer, Stuart–I mean direct marketer…

Spam is UBE: unsolicited, bulk email. This one qualifies as spam assuing that is wasn’t solicited (which is sounds like it wasn’t, otherwise why post about it?) and since it looks like Aaron got the same one, it is bulk.