Spam notwithstanding, what's wrong with the usual methods for sorting email, e.g. catchy wording in title, and filtering based on whether the sender is familiar to you?
Admitted I'm not a celebrity like Arrington, but I really don't find myself especially more likely to absorb email content that I'm apathetic about, even if I get paid. And precisely because I'm no celebrity, I don't see how I could be paid anything more than a pittance by this scheme, meaning someone would be buying my attention span for very cheap.
I'll let the attention span devoted to writing this comment (provided free of change) serve as an example of how I believe this scheme would drastically de-value email readers' time.
I think it'd be okay to be paid a pittance. In fact, I would hope the auction lets people send emails for free. For people that don't get much email, then, it's just like normal, no problems. If you get a lot, people will notice you have 500 emails left unread and go "hm, maybe I should jump the queue". So they pay a dollar. The biggest concern is that if you get a huge number of emails a day, it's kind of sad that people that don't want to pay are pushed down so far. I'm not sure how the service works, but maybe the queue could be designed to balance money with time spent waiting?
I feel like I should dislike this idea, but I think I like it.
Michael Arrington hates reading his email and thinks you should pay him to read it. Enter a service called Attention Acution that gives you a special inbox and let’s people know how many emails you have in your inbox and place a bid to have you read their email. If you read their email then you get paid. Apparently the site is buggy and doesn’t work all the time so it’s unlikely it will take off.
It seems like it should set off alarm bells, but I actually like the idea. I'm not sure how well it'd work in practice, but it might work very well. Kind of the way Metafilter's $5 signup fee works.
eh, I dono... Commercializing email seems like it will make it so you only receive commercial email. I guess that could be good in some situations, but it seems like most of the bidders will be people who /primarily/ send commercial email, e.g. marketers; people I don't want to interact with. Sure, I buy servers and co-lo space, but the last thing I need is a mailbox full of spam from people trying to sell me that.
However, Arrington's attention might actually be that valuable, if your business plan involves a lot of investor hype. So perhaps it's not so much internet kookery as it is general internet douchebaggery.
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[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 29.3 ms ] threadAdmitted I'm not a celebrity like Arrington, but I really don't find myself especially more likely to absorb email content that I'm apathetic about, even if I get paid. And precisely because I'm no celebrity, I don't see how I could be paid anything more than a pittance by this scheme, meaning someone would be buying my attention span for very cheap.
I'll let the attention span devoted to writing this comment (provided free of change) serve as an example of how I believe this scheme would drastically de-value email readers' time.
I feel like I should dislike this idea, but I think I like it.
Michael Arrington hates reading his email and thinks you should pay him to read it. Enter a service called Attention Acution that gives you a special inbox and let’s people know how many emails you have in your inbox and place a bid to have you read their email. If you read their email then you get paid. Apparently the site is buggy and doesn’t work all the time so it’s unlikely it will take off.
http://hnsummary.com/2010/03/29/get-paid-to-read-your-email/
If you are going to pay people to read email, people will generate thousands of email accounts and auto-readers.
http://www.rhyolite.com/anti-spam/you-might-be.html#e-postag...
However, Arrington's attention might actually be that valuable, if your business plan involves a lot of investor hype. So perhaps it's not so much internet kookery as it is general internet douchebaggery.