I just sent my first gmail–to my friend Susan Mernit.
The buzz is that Google will scan stuff we write or receive for
hints about ads to show us. Proactively, I’m starting by spamming their
ad-bot.
“Dear Susan,” I wrote, “I love flowers–roses, lilacs, lilies of the
valley. I love my neighborhood florist shop. Her stargazer lilies have
the most wonderful perfume. I have never actually ordered flowers from
1-800-FLOWERS or Calyx and Corolla, but I’m exactly the kind of person
who might.”
I also told Susan ( a sweet, tolerant person) more than you might want to know about my fondness
for shiny Waring blenders and bright-red sports cars. I hope Susan also
likes flowers, kitchen gadgets, and cars, because if my hypothesis is
correct she will be seeing ads for them too!
If this silly game works, consider its dark-side potential. I’d never
ever send get-well email to Gmail–“Dear Uncle Ern, Hope your
hemorrhoids are improving…”–just think of the ads Uncle Ern would
get
thereafter.
What kind of ads have you been seeing in Gmail? Were they related to anything you wrote?
5 responses so far ↓
1 Betsy Devine // Apr 28, 2004 at 8:06 pm
It worked, it worked! In the 5 minutes it took me to write this blog
entry, Google had done the deed. I went back to Gmail to look at the
letter I’d sent Susan–4 different text ads for flowers. Yay!
2 enoch choi // Apr 28, 2004 at 10:06 pm
i feel unloved. i don’t have any ads yet. spare me an email, Betsy? enochchoi A T gmail.com
3 Nobius Black // Apr 30, 2004 at 5:52 am
I haven’t tried out Gmail yet. I heard it’s nothing much different than what’s already out there. The only bonus being more storage. However, on my BLOG I see the most interesting text adds. In fact are some are quite disturbing. I’ve received adds like, ‘Dont burn in hell’, ‘Avoid CIA detection’, and the scariest ‘1000 SPAM recipes’.
4 Nobius Black // Apr 30, 2004 at 5:53 am
I haven’t tried out Gmail yet. I heard it’s nothing much different than what’s already out there. The only bonus being more storage. However, on my BLOG I see the most interesting text adds. In fact are some are quite disturbing. I’ve received adds like, ‘Dont burn in hell’, ‘Avoid CIA detection’, and the scariest ‘1000 SPAM recipes’.
5 Stu Savory // Apr 30, 2004 at 8:13 pm
I find that that G-Mail is a wonderful opportunity to ad-mail the white house with Pro-John-Kerry Ads :-)
Stu