Email is almost useless: Six Ways to Talk to Me

I've recenty gotten some phone calls asking if I'd gotten an email.

I hadn't.

Or maybe I did get it, but the real email was buried in a mountain of spam and junk mail.

It's never been this bad.

Lot's of people are complaining.

Ronni writes:

If anyone reading this has written to Crabby Old Lady lately expecting an answer, you’re probably disappointed or, more likely, pissed off. Crabby is at the end of her rope, pulling at her hair, pounding the desk, throwing wadded-up paper at the cat - a deranged, screaming harridan teetering on the edge of her mental precipice.

The reason for her lunatic behavior? For every legitimate email she receives – a message from a friend, blog reader, colleague, subscription newsletter, Google Alert, etc. – there are a minimum now of 50 to 75 pieces of spam. Maybe more. Close to a thousand of them pour one after another - 10, 15, 20, 25 at a time - into her inbox day and night and that’s in addition to the hundreds of spam messages a day Crabby’s email filter catches before they hit her inbox.

Eric Rice writes:

If I’m lucky, I get e-mail one of three ways: immediately; four days; or never.

The spam battle is the worst part, since so much spam resembles support e-mails, avatar names, or introductory correspondence. The filters are either too aggressive or too lax, resulting in me trying to read it all.

What reliable means of comunication are left?


Six Ways to Talk to Me
Blogs - If you've got a blog and I subscribe to it via RSS, I'll see everything you post. This works really great with friends like Zadi, Chris, Bre, Chuck, Dave, Robert, Jeff, Mike, David, Kevin, Ravi, Amanda, Ze, Tim, Andrew, Micki, and many others. If you are reading this blog, you're probably on my Bloglines list. Comment on my blogs posts and I usually see those. Unless it's an old post and the notification email gets lost in spam. ;-)

IM - Instant messaging works great. I use text 90% of the time, and Audio/Video chat around 10%.

Flickr - If I have you marked as a contact on flickr, I see your new photos and keep up with what you are doing and where you are. My friends who use flickr like a blog are Chuck, Steve and Casey.

Phone - My phone # is on SteveGarfield.com, so anyone can call me.

Text Messages - I'm on the 10 cents a message plan, so I don't use text messages that much, but they work.

White-list email - I haven't set any of these up yet, but that's what Eric Rice is doing. He's creating new email addresses for individual groups. Other friends use a technique of putting KNOCK KNOCK in the message subject line to make hte message stand out from spam. I guess we could try that for now...

How are you dealing with Spam? Comment on this post.