Ted's Take

Earlier this year, I started a blog. Originally it was internal - available only to AOL employees, but since that didn’t really seem to be in keeping with the spirit of the internet, or the blogging community, I’ve decided to go public and open it up to everyone. So welcome to my blog.

You may have seen some of the recent media swirl around our decision (and that of Yahoo!) to partner with a company called Goodmail which "certifies" mail from some large companies and organizations by charging them a fraction of a cent and putting a special icon on each mail.Truthfully, the whole thing has been a tempest in a teapot.  A couple facts:1)    Consumers don’t — and won’t — pay a thing.  This program is only for large companies and other mailers who want to make sure that their legitimate, opt-in e-mail reaches its intended recipients.2)    You can’t buy your way past our spam filers.  Our industry-leading filters, which have reduced spam by 75% for our members, will stay intact.  If members refer mail as spam, even from a certified sender, we will take action, and — if appropriate — even suspend their certification.3)    The program is totally optional, not required.  If your company doesn’t want to participate, that’s fine.  Your mail will still get through if it doesn’t violate our normal spam filters.4)    We are keeping our existing "enhanced white list".  An early communication from us got this wrong, but we are keeping our existing "enhanced white list" of senders who have met our highest anti-spam standards.

5)    This is good for consumers and for businesses.  If e-mail costs a little money to send, then legitimate companies have an incentive to send less of it, which means less mail in your in-box.  On the other hand, if businesses are sure that their mail will get through, they can more effectively reach their customers with important news and information, increasing the value of each mail.  Everybody wins.We honestly don’t think we’ll make a lot of money on this.  We did this because we compared the various options, and Goodmail had the best system to reduce spam while increasing the value of e-mail for businesses.  If you listen closely, however, you’ll hear the sound of a lot of sour grapes being squashed by Goodmail’s competitors.  They didn’t like our decision to go with another company, but we think you will.  Give us a chance to implement this system, and let me know what you think.