Our next mini-essay contributor, Chris Tolles, takes a bullish view of the future open playing field of the Web, due to the continued prevalence of… of all things… spam!
Chris Tolles:
Spam as a social asset
I’m not worried about the future of the web. And you know why? Spam. Despite the massive amount of effort of the companies that supposedly are exerting undue control over our web experience – it is the spammers that prove again and again that freedom and ingenuity will always triumph over centralized control. While I curse my inbox, or the crappy search results, or people hijacking a friend’s Facebook page – these experiences also showcase, in their platforms’ inability to being able to prevent these pipsqueak pirates from annoying their users, that these Internet giants, too, are mortal and put their virtual pants on one leg at a time.
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Chris Tolles is CEO of Topix and a veteran of technology startups, including his well known role as co-founder and VP Marketing of NewHoo, which was operated as the Open Directory Project, the largest human-edited directory on the Web, following its sale to Netscape/AOL.