weemba@garnet.berkeley.edu (Obnoxious Math Grad Student) (09/10/88)
In article <2465@epimass.EPI.COM>, jbuck@epimass (Joe Buck) writes: >In article <8869@cup.portal.com> Ferg@cup.portal.com writes: >>I run a small mail order business part time and thought I could stir up >>some business on the net. >For the most part, this is definitely NOT OK. Anyone want to place bets on when the ICC gets interested in USENET? ucbvax!garnet!weemba Matthew P Wiener/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720
brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) (09/11/88)
There has never been any "decision" on commercial material. It is indeed a subject of much debate. It's clear that there is a very high demand for this sort of stuff. When comp.newprod was created, it ranked very highly in the readership surveys, ie. in the top 10. But it has faded off because I don't think it is doing what it should. We get bunches of postings spaced several weeks apart, all very general. For unknown reasons, some of the news guidelines actually say that product announcements should go in comp.newprod, and *not* in the group where the readers would be interested. This makes no sense to me. Each comp.newprod article should also be crossposted to the correct group (comp.unix, comp.sys.whatever). Evidence shows that product information, direct company response and support are very highly valued by readers. Everybody seems very keen to see Atari in comp.sys.atari, Telebit in comp.dcom.modems, SCO in comp.unix.xenix, MKS in comp.sys.ibm.pc etc. For some reason there are a few complainers who have mistaken this net for a public network of some kind, when it is privately owned. There is no restriction on usenet. Arpanet sites are restricted in some ways. As long as product related postings are informational, and of value to both the readers/customers and the producer, and they aren't sent by automatic gateway to the Arpanet, there is no problem, except from whiners. The only other concern that has been voiced in the past relates to product material from companies that are competitors of major net sites. This never seems to have been a problem. While it is impolite to use a competitor's resources to promote your product, it's far more impolite to use other people's resources for endless gigabytes of net.trash that nobody is interested in. We have worse problems to worry about. As long as commercial postings are informative, useful, and not repetitive or annoying, go ahead. -- Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473
cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer) (09/14/88)
In article <2020@looking.UUCP>, brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes: > There has never been any "decision" on commercial material. It is indeed > a subject of much debate. > > But it has faded off because I don't think it is doing what it should. We > get bunches of postings spaced several weeks apart, all very general. For > unknown reasons, some of the news guidelines actually say that product > announcements should go in comp.newprod, and *not* in the group where the > readers would be interested. > > This makes no sense to me. Each comp.newprod article should also be > crossposted to the correct group (comp.unix, comp.sys.whatever). What I've done, when posting products announcements for Niche Marketing, is to put the full announcement in comp.newprod, and then VERY brief (i.e. five to six line) pointers to the announcement in the appropriate groups. So far, no nasty mail has resulted. Clayton E. Cramer