A little while ago AOL decided to charge organisations and companies for guaranteed delivery of fully-hyperlinked and imaged emails in users’ inboxes.

A New York Times article described it as “a major change in the economics of the Internet”.

Many saw this a bad thing. Some because it looks like a naked grab for cash , others because it creates a two-tier email system, others because they view it as an attack on free speech (SpamHaus too), others because it might be anti-competitive, putting another squeeze on small businesses but easily absorbed by larger corporations.

Seth Godin, however, puts his head up above the parapet and provides a robust defence of the idea.

It’s all about friction, apparently. He concludes that everyone’s a winner. The only people who will lose are spammers and marketers who measure tonnage.

Tags: AOL, delivery assurance, email, friction, goodmail, metrics, spammers, stamps, Yahoo

Related posts

• AOL demands cash on delivery for email
• SwiftMail: Gmail, .Mac, Yahoo or AOL from the Dashboard
• Stop AOL’s email tax
• Spam-busting: Mail.app and Thunderbird compared
• Pay-per-email: More on AOL and Goodmail

AOL now charges companies and organizations money to ensure that their emails arrive in AOL members’ inboxes.

Previously AOL used a free IP-based “Enhanced White List”. Senders that observed best practice in their email habits could be (mostly) sure that their emails would reach AOL customers.

According to a report on ClickZNews , companies must now sign up for accreditation with Goodmail, an “email delivery assurance business” that charges “accredited companies a fraction of a cent per message sent”. Otherwise their emails may not arrive, or will arrive with hyperlinks and images disabled.

Slashdot reports that Yahoo is expected to follow suit.

Is this a bad thing? An investor in a rival delivery assurance company thinks so

And so it’s a sad day for email. The spammers have won. They have turned email delivery into a business that can be bought and sold for the highest price.

Or is it a win for customers in the end, as AOL Postmaster Charles Stiles says in the ClickZNews report?

Our focus and goal here is to provide a safer and more secure environment for our consumers, and restore some trust in the e-mail inbox.

UPDATE: According to the New York Times , the charge for using this new service ranges between .25 and 1 cent an email.

The article also suggests that

the move to create what is essentially a preferred class of e-mail is a major change in the economics of the Internet.

Tags: AOL, delivery assurance, email, Email in general, Internet, spam, whitelist, Yahoo

Related posts

• Why email stamps are a good idea
• Spam-busting: Mail.app and Thunderbird compared
• SwiftMail: Gmail, .Mac, Yahoo or AOL from the Dashboard
• Stop AOL’s email tax
• Spam tops 80% of all email