When I first joined Microsoft, putting your phone number (forget email) on a business card was optional. You could put the main number and have people just ask for you. I still have old cards with my Compuserve (76276,2706?) address on it.
Fast forward to today.
A quick check of the last pile of business cards I got from Microsoft and of the 22, 14 have cell phones on them.
IBM has a worldwide employee directory online and Microsoft switched to first name dot last name @ microsoft.com for email addresses to make it easier to find people.
The point of this history lesson?
I ran across a seriously cool start up this morning. Saw the web site, service offering as said, yeah, I gotta team these guys up with one of my portfolio companies and give them a high six figure product order. They’ve been around for about 6 months, doesn’t matter, this solves a major problem.
Click on contact us.
Web form. We’ll get back to you with 2 -3 business days. WTF?
Hmm. Click on about us. Long dribble about why they exist, a founders message and nothing about the people.
Okay, let’s re-cap. We have a 6 month old start up making it as hard and as impersonal as possible to take an order while the founder drones on about Web 2.0, being innovative, blaah blaah blaah.
Put real email addresses on the web site. Contact us means just that. A phone number and real email addresses. My view is this: If Robert Scoble can drive across country, post his cell phone on his blog and invite the world to give em a call, you can cough up an email address on your web site. If IBM can allow the world to roam the company director, give me a way to get to you.
If you force me to guess, get the IT folks (you) to cover for the boo boos. Have Info@, Sales@, support@ as well as your first name@, last name@, first initial last name@, first name dot last name@, etc, all in the system so if anybody wants to contact you can, even if they screw up. Naturally, those of you using Gmail or some such, have an issue since you can’t (from a practical perspective) do all the variations, so make sure you have a phone number on your web site so if email bounces because of spelling or a brain fart, I can get to you.
Half a million bucks burning a hole in my pocket, amazing.
Have a great weekend everybody.
Half a million, eh? You can have my personal address and a key to my house. Wanna buy 10,000 copies of TEO?
Posted by: Josh Einstein | July 22, 2006 at 00:00
People fear getting too much SPAM if they add a real email address to a website.
See http://alicorna.com/obfuscator.html for one simple answer.
Posted by: Greg | July 24, 2006 at 00:09
"Naturally, those of you using Gmail or some such, have an issue since you can’t (from a practical perspective) do all the variations"
I'd argue that even this isn't a valid defence anymore.
Loads of domain registrars will allow you to do email aliasing now on premium accounts (which cost next to nothing). For example, the provider I use charges US$20/year for domain registration + premium services (including unlimited email aliases). Just setup all the different aliases and forward them to the Gmail account of choice. Outbound is a little more challenging but with any pop client you can just put the alias in as your email address. It can be completely invisible to the end user/prospect/potential investor.
A couple of years back we even got together as a family and registered a family domain. Now we all have a common domain name and email addresses regardless of provider switches etc. and as an added bonus we can create "disposable" aliases for use on public sites that we can just turf if/when the SPAM gets too bad.
- Ryan
Posted by: Ryan Coleman | July 24, 2006 at 08:56
Greg, Thanks for the link, I'm taking a look.
Ryan, thanks for stopping by. A couple of years back, I looked at company who had the single mission of building disposable email addresses.
Posted by: Rick Segal | July 24, 2006 at 09:39
"A couple of years back, I looked at company who had the single mission of building disposable email addresses."
I vaguely remember a couple of companies trying to push that idea forward. Unfortunately it's more "band-aid" then actually problem solving. An interesting approach I remember was the guys who were trying to create a system where you could get a one-off email address for a reg. form or e-com site and it would basically accept the one email from that site and then the email address would be killed. Interesting idea but in the end I think it was more trouble than it was worth.
- Ryan
Posted by: Ryan Coleman | July 25, 2006 at 11:44
One-time use doesn't solve enough problems.
Like many people, I don't give out my e-mail address on warrantee cards and the like because I'm worried about spam from the company and my address being sold.
However, I realize that I'm missing out on product recalls and other information that I'd like to have.
I'd like to give out a revokable one-sender address that is heavily filtered. The straightforward implementation (unique addresses per sender) has to also be resistant against forged creations and easy to manage. (I don't want to remember which address I gave to PG&E.)
I must be able to generate new addresses even when I'm not at my lap\desktop but it's probably acceptable if I get the addresses from a blackberry or cell phone. (I could carry a card of unused addresses in my wallet.)
Yes, I've thought (more) about this.
Any advice?
Posted by: Andy Freeman | July 27, 2006 at 12:17
Rick,
Before you get all high and mighty on this issue, check out your own website. Unless I'm mistaken, there is no way for me or anyone else to find your "real email address" on the JLA website. The contact info for each of the principals is the same info@jlaventures.com. How very warm and fuzzy of you all.
And, by the way, when are you guys going to bring your website into the 20th century (let alone the 21st century). It looks more like my accountant's website than a cutting edge, Web 2.0 venture capital fund.
Posted by: Derek | July 30, 2006 at 01:54