Message-ID: <199612210223.SAA06431@anditel.andinet.lat.net> Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1996 17:57:48 +0000 From: Reinaldo Vicini <mailto:interext@ANDITEL.ANDINET.LAT.NET> Subject: (Fwd) Rotary: (Fwd: Worthy Cause To: Multiple recipients of list DEVEL-L <mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU>
Dear friends:Here is the result of the e-mail affair with Houghton Mifflin. Please take note
------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- From: mailto:billo@prodigy.com (MR WILLIAM M HERR, JR.) Date: Wed, 18 Dec 1996 18:15:49, -0500 To: mailto:rotary@listserv.prodigy.com Subject: Rotary: (Fwd: Worthy Cause Reply-to: mailto:rotary@listserv.prodigy.com
Howdy to all,
With respect to the book promotion, the rest of the story is as follows:
NO MORE EMAILS ARE DESIRED.
Make it stop! Publisher's E-mail-for-books campaign too successful; mail server crashes and the mail keeps on coming.
By Todd Wallack Network World Fusion
Somerville, Mass. - It was supposed to be a cheery little Christmas promotion - Houghton Mifflin Interactive promised to donate a book to hospitalized children for every 25 electronic messages they got about the spirit of the season.
But the campaign went horribly awry - the company began receiving so many messages that its mail server crashed and its employees found it difficult to send E-mail of their own.
...
"I'd be red-faced if we asked for this," said Winston Chou, the company's technical services manager, "but someone got a hold of our message and changed it." "It's pretty easy to be made to look stupid when people on the Internet go nuts," Chou said.
...
Countless users also passed the word along, urging users to flood the company with E-mail to make sure they reached the 50,000 goal. By mid-last week, the company received 13,000 responses in a single day - mostly via E-mail - and the system was startling to crawl. By Friday, the company network was completely overloaded - and employees had trouble sending or receiving outside email.
About a half-dozen IS workers tried to get the problem under control. First, they shut down an auto-responder that had been answering each incoming message - cutting the traffic through the gateway in half. Then, after rejecting plans to load up a second server, staffers purged the disk drives and set up a filter to route the messages to /dev/null, effectively purging it.
...
Chou acknowledged that many in IS are "annoyed" by all the extra work, but the marketing department thinks the huge response is just great - and may send IS staffers flowers or Scotch to mend the bad feelings.
...
But Dern says the program now threatens to become an online urban legend, like the "Good Times" virus, that will continue to haunt both the Net and the publisher for years to come. "The marketing department should have consulted with the MIS department first, and people familiar with the Internet," he said. "Anyone with a clue would have given then 100-to-1 odds that they would regret it."
Message From mailto:billo@prodigy.com (MR WILLIAM M HERR, JR.) to Prodigy's Rotary Clubs Mailing List ********************************************************************** Prodigy Services Company is the sponsor of this newsletter. Prodigy does not review and cannot be responsible for the content of the newsletter or related discussions. ********************************************************************** To subscribe, unsubscribe, or get more information on Prodigy mailing lists, go to http://goodstuff.prodigy.com/lists/ or send a message with the word "help" in the body to mailto:majordomo@listserv.prodigy.com
Que tengan un Gran Dia Rotario
Reinaldo Vicini P. International Avenue Director Bogota-Santa Barbara Rotary Club Bogota, Distrito 4290, Colombia
E-mail Address mailto:interext@anditel.andinet.lat.net Club Homepage http://www.colomsat.net.co/rotarios.bogota ROTI Member http://www.es.co.nz/~rotary/roti.htm ROTI Member Photos http://www.swbi.net/jocoe/roti PowWow -5 GMT 11:30-14:00; 23:30-02:00 (GMT Time) ROTI Latino Miembro -Member- 4290 ROTI Committee Miembro -Member-
"Los espejos y la copula son abominables porque multiplican el numero de hombres" ______________________________________
Jorge Luis Borges