[tomwalsham]

Some would argue Email is little more than USPS over IP.

I think the most interesting aspect of modern communications - accidentally in the 90s, deliberately in the post-twitter-era - is the simple addressability of people.

There was a tradition of letter writing for centuries (visit the British Library), but it required some level of introduction to connect. The academic roots of email broke some communication boundaries (to the time-detriment of prominent academics), and Twitter has opened the same addressability to celebrities and field-leaders (with a more voluntary twist I would say).

[itmag]

Yes, but this addressability of people also means that the sender must have some value to provide.

Being able to self-create a platform of value that you can offer to people you wish to network with is crucial (I created a magazine to accomplish this objective).

[jacquesm]

> Yes, but this addressability of people also means that the sender must have some value to provide.

If only that were the whole of it. The sender must have some value to provide in the eyes of the recipient. But the recipient will actually have to look at the message in order to determine if this is the case or not. That decision alone makes many messages that were sent with value '0' a net negative to the recipient.

Hence all the spam. If the 'providing of value' would be a thing we could determine in advance then the low barrier would not be an issue.

Effectively a spam filter determines that the value of a message is '0' to the intended recipient to avoid them becoming negatives.