Can Spammers Benefit Usenet?
August 9, 2010 - NewsAdmin Staff Writer

It may be sacrilege to suggest the following, but in the right circumstance, I believe that spammers have the capacity to benefit Usenet. I'm not referring to the spammers who sell authentic Rolex watches, Harvard doctorate degrees, or erectile dysfunction cures, but the folks who operate adult entertainment websites. Yes you heard correctly, porn sites, but before you spew coffee on your keyboard and fire off a "WTF!!!" email to the NewsAdmin staff, hear us out for a moment.

As you may know there is an adult component of the Usenet community where people exchange erotic stories, images and videos across several thousand newsgroups. Participants will share their homegrown amateur content within these groups, while sharing space with adult businesses that post content to raise awareness for their commercial websites. In most cases the promotional content is poor quality, off-topic, and contributes nothing of value to the newsgroups, which does not sit well with Usenet users and service providers. As a result providers make an effort to remove the commercial posts from their news servers, and end-users either kill filter or ignore any of the content that manages to sneak into their favorite groups.

This game of cat-and-mouse has been tolerated for years, but it's not the most productive or efficient arrangement. Usenet providers expend resources filtering unwanted content and answering abuse complaints, adult websites spend their time trying to out smart the filters, and end-users get stuck somewhere in the middle. What if everyone took a step back from the current routine and attempted to work together? I'm not suggesting that we all hold hands and sing "Kumbaya", but if each side made reasonable concessions... Usenet providers, adult websites & newsgroup users... we could create an arrangement that benefits everyone to some degree.

To adult websites Usenet is a tremendous promotional vehicle that offers an opportunity to reach millions of potential customers quickly and inexpensively. Rather than waste thousands of thousands of dollars on traditional advertising that usually yields little return, for the cost of a Usenet membership these businesses can reach a targeted audience of consumers that have a specific interest in the content and services they provide. Unfortunately instead of respecting this unique opportunity, most adult websites go out of their way to abuse the relationship and burn bridges. With that said we'd like to propose a few posting guidelines that would allow adult websites to become both promoter and contributor, without drawing the wrath of Usenet providers and users.

Less Is More
When adult websites post images or videos they're typically plastered with logos, URLs and sales messages. While these businesses are selling the idea that their websites offer quality content, what they essentially post are obnoxious ad banners that leave newsgroup users with a poor impression of their business. In place of this nonsense, adult websites should place a discrete promotional reference in the border of their posted media that does not obscure the photos or videos they are showcasing.

Stay On Topic
Each newsgroup within the Usenet community caters to a unique topic, and end-users will congregate within a group because they share a mutual interest in a given topic. There are adult newsgroups that celebrate blondes, redheads, brunettes, skinny women, full figured women, and just about every other subject matter you can imagine (or don't wish to imagine). Rather than respect this system, adult websites are notorious for posting off-topic content into the newsgroups, uploading 100's of photos of a brunette model for example into a group dedicated to blonde haired women. Off-topic posts are disruptive, and leave end-users with the impression that an adult website is either too lazy or unwilling to take the time to understand the content of a particular group... none of which is going to inspire folks to visit a site or become a customer.

Quality Versus Quantity
Adult websites also have a history of posting photos and videos to the newsgroups that are of poor quality. They may post images at a low resolution that are too small to view, an incomplete photo series, or short video snippets that offer 15 seconds of useless footage. While not the best analogy, this would be comparable to a bakery trying to attract customers by serving cake samples that were too small or poorly baked. Adult websites are typically sitting on a tremendous inventory of content, so they have the flexibility to use some of that media to promote their site without giving away all of their content. With that in mind these businesses should think about posting high resolution photos and longer video clips that showcases the unique content that can be found at their websites.

Say No To Recycling
Usenet is one of the few environments where recycling is frowned upon. You wouldn't want to watch the same TV rerun every day, so as an adult website don't post the same set of photos to the newsgroups every day and expect end-users to be thrilled with your decision. As noted earlier, adult websites usually have a large inventory of photos and videos on hand, so there's no reason why they can't use some of that excess content to keep a fresh supply of posts within the newsgroups.

The newsgroups benefit from quality, on-topic posts and if the above mentioned guidelines are followed it shouldn't matter if an end-user or an adult website is providing that content. Working within this framework, adult websites can become productive contributors to the newsgroups, Usenet providers would spend less time tending to abuse complaints and spam filtering, and newsgroup users would benefit be receiving more content in their favorite groups.

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