Comments on: The Goodmail Storm

By: Joshua E.

Joshua E. — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 17:56:15 +0000

I have been with AOL since the beginning (10+ years) and frankly, I NO LONGER BELIEVE what AOL says. IF #4 above is actually true, it is because We, the people, cried out and AOL backtracked, NOT because of a communication error. We, the people, understood very clearly what AOL was trying to do and I for one, am STILL not satisfied with AOL’s response to the situation. If this new tiered pay-to-play email system takes affect, I plan on leaving the AOL.

By: Margret

Margret — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 15:48:29 +0000

a long time member is against the aol goodmail. Wants to protest that.

By: David

David — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 17:02:19 +0000

What if I don’t WANT the paid adverts flooding my inbox? I can assure you that I do NOT want paid access to my inbox, against my wishes, any more than I want unpaid access.The comment “everybody wins” means that AOL and the paid advertisers win, not the subscribers.Please don’t do this, you’ll lose at least this 10+ year customer.

By: Moose

Moose — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 15:11:53 +0000

It’s really easy to report a “breaking story” when you don’t have all the facts. Frankly, it upsets me because no one took the time to let AOL respond to these claims before “breaking” the story to the AOL masses and it’s simply BAD journalism.

By: Smurf

Smurf — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 18:10:33 +0000

I really shouldn’t have heard about that from MoveOn.org before AOL.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 14:46:51 +0000

Curious. I had an on-line technical support discussion yesterday with AOL and was told that the new “certified” mail would NOT be stopped by the AOL spam filters. So Ted, who is wrong, your unofficial site here, or the official AOL support services – which I’ve kept the transcript?

By: Matt Blumberg

Matt Blumberg — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 20:04:30 +0000

Ted –As one of Goodmail’s quasi-competitors who has been vocal about this issue, I thought it was worth commenting here. As you know, AOL first announced its relationship with Goodmail several months ago, so the recent comments and news were not related to your deal with them. Our comments were really just sparked by #4 above, the miscommunication about the shutting down of the enhanced whitelist. While it might have been bad for us as a company, we also felt this was a bad move for email senders. Many of our clients agreed, so as industry leaders in email publishing/marketing, we spoke out.As soon as the miscommunication was corrected, we publicly (on CNBC and in many blog postings and reporter interviews) and privately thanked AOL for the clarification, then we moved on. We continue to support this move and think it’s the right way to go.We have no sour grapes and have had a productive working relationship with AOL for several years that we hope to continue. Our solutions for clients — both on the whitelist front and on the organic deliverability front — are both highly compatible with AOL’s anti-spam philosophy. We are confident that our solutions, the results we’ve generated in helping mailers treat AOL subscribers better (generating reduced volumes of mail and reduced complaints), and the strength of our ISP relations team will keep our relationship with you strong.I apologize for any misunderstanding around our comments on this topic. Matt BlumbergChairman & CEOReturn Path, Inc.