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DTC on the march … again?!?
By barney | October 8, 2007
Well, it seems that DTC is rearing its head again. The newest kid on the block is Desktop Lightning and it is destined to become the 800 pound gorilla of communications - or so the ads would have us believe <sigh />
Seems like there’s a new one every year or so. And every one of ‘em is/was gonna be the 800 pound gorilla of communications. Every one of ‘em is/was gonna replace email. Every one of ‘em is/was gonna be the marketer’s dream package, an un-blockable ad delivery machine.Give me a break.Let’s see … the first big one, as I recall, was Pointcast.
Pointcast was a push network back in the mid-nineties. Oh, it worked as advertised … and brought more than one corporate network to its knees <grin />. I was at MCI at the time, and all my managers loved it. The sysops hated it. and the corporate powers finally banned it. It soaked up bandwidth like a sponge.
There’ve been many since then. Couple of years ago, there was Private Mail Reader (PMR), espoused by several of the marketing heavy hitters. It’s still around, but you don’t hear much about it any more. Ya know why? It’s a faulty concept.
That’s right, DTC - Desk Top Communications - is a faulty concept. Oh, the applications that I’ve seen all worked, to one degree or another. Some of ‘em were lousy, full of bugs, but some of ‘em worked damned well. But a faulty concept, now matter how brilliantly implemented, is still a faulty concept.
Ok, I s’pose you want me to explain that. It’s simple, really. DTC is almost always touted as a replacement for email. Generally, two types of people extol DTC: marketers, who want free license to hawk their wares: and otherwise intelligent folk who don’t know how to deal with spam.
(Side note. The last survey I saw, ’bout a year ago, revealed that the folk who whined the most about spam were also the ones most likely to respond to it. I don’t know how valid that survey was, but I have no trouble at all in believing the result <grin/>.)
Anyway, back to the DTCs. From the marketer’s standpoint, DTC is a wet dream. You can send all the ads you like, and no regulatory body can say anything about it: it’s a private communication, agreed to by the recipient.
Of course, the prospect has to download it. And install it. And run it. And read it. Equally of course, the DTC app will be perfect. It won’t use any resources while running. It won’t interfere with any other apps. It won’t crash. It won’t cause any crashes. OK, even given that it is the perfect app, the prospect still has to use it.
From the whiner’s viewpoint, it’s ideal because only the folk the whiner allows can communicate. And therein lies the rub - one of ‘em at least. I can’t communicate with you unless you allow me to do so. Why is that a problem?
Your uncle Fred is on his deathbed. He’s rewriting his will before he dies. He will leave you a million dollars if you visit him before he dies. Your aunt Rita tries to send you an email. But she’s not on your allowed list, so she can’t get through: you never get the notice. Uncle Fred gives up on you, and before he gives up the ghost, he leaves the million bucks to Operation Greenpeace.
See? You lost a million bucks because you didn’t want to learn how to deal with spam.
Oh, and as for the marketing thing … that marketer that conned you into using that DTC app is doing great … but none of the other marketers can get to you. So how long is it going to be before that marketer starts selling access?
One other thing, while we’re at it. One of the basic premises behind DTC is no spam. But, if DTC replaces email, what will all the spammers do? Why, they’ll hire programmers to find a way to access your DTC. Hey, if tech made it, tech can break it.
RSS is popular right now. Guess what? It’s a DTC app. I don’t know about your experiences with RSS, but I’ve already experienced spam. UCE (Unsolicited Commercial Email) is the legal definition of spam in the US, but my definition is a bit broader. I consider spam to be any communication I did not directly solicit (More often than not it is commercial.). And I have received, via RSS feed, material I did not ask to receive. Spam.
[Posted 2006-10-19, Moved 2007-10-08]
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