I was having a conversation with a customer prospect the other day about the volume of spam they are receiving and the things that Centrend can do for not only helping reduce the annoyance, but make e-mail systems more efficient. She was curious to know why we get spam in the first place, and why is it called, “spam,” anyway?

The naming of Internet “spam” has not so much to do with the luncheon meat, produced by Hormel Foods, as it does with a television skit recorded by Monty Python’s Flying Circus. In the skit, a restaurant patron found that everything in the restaurant was served with SPAM, whether the customer wanted it or not. The proprietor and the other patrons couldn’t believe their ears when the customer claimed he didn’t want any SPAM. A chorus of, “SPAM…SPAM…SPAM…SPAM…” then eliminated all other conversation.

The earliest form of Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE) was actually unsolicited advertising on message boards. In the early 1990’s the Usenet (newsgroups) was a relatively pristine environment for giving and receiving ideas and information on thousands of topics open for discussion. That is, until some individuals figured out that it’s also a great place to send cheap bulk advertising to millions of people at once.

Although posting irrelevant messages to message boards is considered taboo and annoying, offenders began to realize the potential return on investment was huge. Vast numbers of postings of unwanted messages being downloaded to local PCs was unstoppable, and soon became known as “spam", in reference to the famous Monty Python skit.

Hormel Foods, Inc.’s official position on the subject is that the company doesn’t mind if you call it “spam", just remember that the real SPAM is a registered trademark. The people at Hormel Foods believe that the use of “spam” as a slang term will not hurt their product marketing. However, the company does not allow the use of its product’s likeness in reference to UCE.

We do not object to use of this slang term to describe UCE, although we do object to the use of the word “spam” as a trademark and to the use of our product image in association with that term. Also, if the term is to be used, it should be used in all lower-case letters to distinguish it from our trademark SPAM, which should be used with all uppercase letters.

- Hormel Foods Corporation

In my next blog posting we’ll discuss E-mail best practices - things you should know.

-Bill

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Bill Bowman
Senior Technology Advisor
Centrend, Inc.
508-347-9550 x135