Do You Know What Internet Spam Is?

Everyone gets to hear the word spam on the Internet but not everyone really knows what spam is. Even though there appears to be many definitions of spam, simply put, spam is uninvited and unwanted electronic communication on others. Many internet users once believed that spam related primarily to e-mail communications only. That thinking has changed with time. Because the Internet has evolved many new and practical ways to communicate effectively, so also have spam rules evolved in tandem to cover these many new situations as they evolve. One very clear thinking in Internet business right now is that spam is not a good thing. To many marketers and even consumers, spam is simply bad news.

Many online marketing experts generally agree that there are many ways to spam. They say that you can spam not only by sending unsolicited commercial e-mail but by posting unwanted comments on blogs or social media postings. Really? Many of us do these things very casually on social media without giving any conscious thought to the consequences. That by sending even unsolicited text (SMS) messages to others, we are actually spamming. Even in huge, well-established and very popular marketing/trading sites like Ebay, Amazon and TripleClicks, people spam even in their forums while providing reviews of products on the sites.

With e-mail, spam and spamming are fairly easy and straightforward to explain even to a newbie. It is generally accepted about e-mails that spam occurs when someone receives annoying and generally irritating mails they did not ask for. This is more so when such mails emanate from people or organizations that they neither know nor have requested to do business with. More often than not, many of such mails are usually from people or organizations trying to sell them stuff that they neither need nor want. Extending that thought to social media, blogs, and virtually any other opportunity one has to type content seen by the public, spam clearly presents as something that is designed to sell something or promote something that is a distraction to the intended subject of the conversation. Simple! No serious business person cherishes any form of distractions particularly online.