Now that GMail invitations are leaking more than the Hoover Dam and everyone’s getting their kicks off reviewing and teasing this new mail metaphor, we’re not done with the “War of the Emails”, not by far.

In one corner, we’ve got the encumbents defending their positions through categorical filtering. That’s right, both Yahoo! and Hotmail are blocking, I mean filtering, GMail invites into the circular file. Don’t believe me? Check out this tidbit from news.com:

Receiving a coveted invitation to open a free e-mail account on Google’s Gmail is a thrill that’s literally lost on Microsoft.

At least it was for Joel Johnson’s girlfriend, whose MSN Hotmail account (a rival free e-mail service) bounced invitations to join Gmail twice last Wednesday. That day, Johnson was given the chance to dole out two accounts for Gmail to friends before the high-profile service is widely launched, per Google’s policy of limiting membership to friends, and friends of friends, while it works out the kinks.

Source: News.com, “Hotmail giving cold shoulder to Google mail?”

And even though Hotmail hasn’t chosen to respond to the challenge, don’t think Yahoo! is giving up so easily. They’ve not only upped the ante, providing 100MB for free and 2GB for $20 a year, they’ve also changed the interface to their entire application.

I’ll be posting my GMail review soon.

In the almost surreal fervor by Outsiders to obtain early access to the GMail system from the Insiders, a new distribution tactic has floated to the surface: kindness. In an attempt to deflate the monetary value of GMail access, Jonas Luster has launched a new “contest”, of sorts.

In this altruistic version, the Outsiders buy their entrance with semi-random acts of kindness. As the site describes:

49 invites given away
9 invites open
$3234 in charitable donations
$5500 pledged without invite in our name
19 individuals went and offered their own invites
26 individuals will be doing good

It’s not free, however. If you’re interested in one, comment here and let me know what you’re willing to do for it. Not to me (though I am more than ready to trade for a few good massages), but to someone else. A random act of kindness, maybe? Work in a soup kitchen? Help out at a needle exchange? Or maybe you’re doing that already - you’d be the ideal recipient.

Source: Jonas Luster, ‘We’ve gots em, the shiny, the precious (”Do some good”)’

On the other end of the spectrum, an enterprising young 15 year old is making thousands already:

It’s one of those Internet schemes, reminiscent of the dot-com boom, where money is generated seemingly from nothing: Pierce buys e-mail accounts and sells them on eBay, a business he has so far managed mostly during his lunch hour, between exams and after school.

He has Google to thank: An upcoming free e-mail service from the popular search engine has people so eager to get an account before all the catchy e-mail account names are swept up that they’re willing to pay for one of the relatively few test accounts available today. Pierce’s biggest customer so far paid $102.50 for an account.

Pierce is merely the middleman. When a friend bragged about having a “Gmail” account a few weeks ago, Pierce hadn’t heard of Google’s e-mail service. Then he checked eBay and discovered a booming business.

Though most auctions were offering accounts individually, one seller was selling multiple accounts, for a little under $30 apiece. Pierce snapped up the accounts and resold them on the auction site, in auctions that generally closed at around $60 each.

Source: HonoluluAdvertiser.com, “Selling ‘Gmail’ pays off for teen”

Hard to believe there’s more revenue generated outside of the GMail system than directly from it.

Who Got the Message? There’s a Way to Know
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/03/technology/circuits/03spyy.html

A new service promises to pull back the curtain on anyone hiding behind the common white lie “I never got your e-mail.” Users of the service, DidTheyReadIt (didtheyreadit.com), can clandestinely track when and where their e-mail is read.

The service, which has already drawn complaints from privacy advocates, offers a new and quiet way to harvest behavioral information about friends, colleagues and potential consumers.

[…]

Subscribers to the DidTheyReadIt service receive an e-mail message notifying them of the time, rough location and duration of the the recipient’s viewing of each message the subscriber sent. The service is available in quarterly, semiannual or annual subscriptions and ranges in price from $25 for three months to $50 a year. A free account allows users to send five tracked messages a month.

When Google announced its plans for a web-mail system, I was not surprised at all. The 1GB limits they setup were certainly a bit unexpected, but not outside of the thinking of its two captains and the company as a whole.

What has surprised me, however, is the quasi-cottage industry that has formed surrounding this aspect of their business. In general several groups of people have formed:

• Insiders - those that have GMail accounts and report back on their admiration or lack thereof for the new service.

• Outsiders - those that are desperately seeking entrance into the GMail system. I’ve heard of people buying GMail accounts on EBay, using GMail accounts as prizes for objects, and even the formation of a GMailSwapping Network where people can barter away their prized and cherished possessions for a GMail account.

• Crusaders - those that are fighting the GMail service from launching because of concerns regarding provacy, security, ickiness, etc.. Recently, in what must be one of the few, if not the first, case of legislation being filed to preemptively limit the functionality of a web-based application, the California Senate approved its very own Anti-GMail bill.

  Ironically enough, Crusaders need not be Insiders at all. They have been known to object solely on the principle of the issue at hand.

It seems on universal discussion, however, is related to Google’s Invitation-Only services (GMail, Orkut). Many feel that it is a wonderful system that loosely prevents abuse. Others find it exclusionary, even elitist and resent the admission practice. Marketers, of course, think it’s wonderful, and who could blame them. Google has garnered tremendous free publicity and mindshare as result of these tactics.

Antispam framework scores Microsoft endorsement
http://news.com.com/Antispam+framework+scores+Microsoft+endorsement/2100-1032_3-5220253.html?tag=nefd.top

There seems to be great interest in utilizing social networks, personal contacts, and related technologies to cut back on SPAM. Although there has always been the white-list and challenge-response type solutions, these have undesirable effects for most people as they lock out too many potentially valid messages.

Many 2 Many reports on LOAF, the a new e-mail extension designed to utilize personal contact lists as a filtering mechanism for SPAM messages. The best part is that, despite the sharing of contacts across individuals, the information remains in a format that does not compromise those contacts.

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Despite the new regulations introduced via the CAN-SPAM bill, the net effect for us regular folk is still difficult, if not impossible, to detect:

Internet users are more likely to say that e-mail is less trustworthy and less reliable than when they were surveyed in June, the Pew Internet and American Life Project found.

[…]

Slightly more than half said they saw no change in the amount of spam they received at home or work.

Twenty-nine percent said they had reduced their use of e-mail because of spam, up from 25 percent who said so last June.

Sixty-three percent said spam made them less trusting of e-mail in general, up from 52 percent, and 77 percent said the flood of spam made the act of being online unpleasant and annoying, up from 70 percent.

Source: News.com, “Spam still a pain in the in-box, says survey”

CNN reports on a concerted effort under way by the top ISPs, including Microsoft, AOL, Earthlink, and Yahoo! to legally challenge the efforts of the largest spammers.

The companies said the defendants include some of the nation’s most notorious large-scale spammers. The Internet providers — collectively with tens of millions of subscribers — said they shared information, resources and investigative information to identify some of the defendants.

[…]

The “can spam” legislation requires unsolicited e-mails to include a mechanism so recipients could indicate they did not want future mass mailings.

The law also prohibits senders of unsolicited commercial e-mail from disguising their identity by using a false return address or misleading subject line, and it prohibits senders from harvesting addresses off Web sites.

Source: CNN.com, “ISPs sue over spam e-mails”

I guess this is the third front Bill is challenging them on.

In the ensuing battle between end users and spammers, a clever series of experiments has netted a usable Anti-SPAM solution. filster is a new initiative developed by Justin Mason Richard Soderberg that attempts to string together a collection of well-known tools with some quick code.

The premise is surprisingly simple. The system culls information from your existing FOAF profiles (retrieved from the likes of Orkut, FOAFweb, Reputation Research Network, and CPAN. A simple cross-reference with these files for the incoming sender address and, if successful, a simple X-Header is added to the mail message.

For the technically minded, it’s worth checking out. Thanks to JD for pointing this out.

Life With Alacrity reports on the upcoming war over SMTP Authentication. As the SPAM wars continue, the leading mail vendors are all working to develop THEIR OWN standards for how the thwart the onslaught. Three major players have come forward: Yahoo! with Domain Keys, AOL with Sender Policy Framework, and Microsoft with its XML-based Caller-ID.

Christopher focuses on the Microsoft angle in his coverage.

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