Evidently we’re about to find out. EContent reports that Ask.com, formerly known as Ask Jeeves, will futuristically be known as Ask Jeeves, too. Writes EContent: “The company is publishing Jeeves’ supposed ‘travel diary’ from his three years away.”
“One’s friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.”
—George Santayana
HuffPo posted an article yesterday entitled “Five Easy Steps To Email Organization.” It’s just the latest of about a bazillion similar articles that have crossed my screen over the last year or three.
All due respect to the article’s author Karen Leland, a best-selling time-management expert, but organizing email isn’t the issue. That’s the easiest thing in the world. Wanna sort your email by subject or sender or search for specific phrases in your inbox so you can subsequently sort them? No problem: Any of that can be done with an easy click.
The real issue is dealing with the email once you have it organized: reading it, deciding what doesn’t require a response, responding to the rest and making sure nothing important is falling through the cracks.
I don’t know that there are any “easy steps” for dealing with email. At some point, you just have to dig in and read and respond. It’s called work, and while everybody does it a little differently, a new filing method isn’t going to make all that work go away.
The longer I live, the more I see the truth in Sturgeon’s Law. It most recently manifested itself when I sent out about a half-dozen requests to various service providers.
I had some budget to spend on some geo-focused online marketing tactics, but it appears that most people don’t want to take my money. Days later, I’m still waiting for responses to my requests for information ASAP.
The good news, though, is that two providers responded within about an hour — I salute them. They are clearly not among the 90 percent of whom Sturgeon speaks.
So here’s a radical strategy for surviving in a down economy: When someone wants to give you money to do what it is you do professionally, don’t ignore them.
Takeaway for marketers: Be part of the 10 percent exception to Sturgeon’s Law.
… here’s news of yet another study linking the downloading of music to higher music sales.
