Off The List — Entertainment for Planet Earth!
It’s about time that helping our planet has become fun. Jonny Hal has launched a web series that tracks his attempts to be removed from marketer’s mailing list. This is pretty funny stuff! The preview is below. And check out his first episode on Verizon.
GreenDimes provides an easy way to get you off the list and is worth the $3/month. They even plant trees on your behalf. GreenDimes was founded by Pankaj Shah, who had previously founded 4INFO among other companies.
ProQuo is another company that can reduce your junk -snail- mail, and is backed by Draper Fisher Jurvetson. On that same note, who said you can’t launch a company that does exactly what the other does. If there’s a big enough market, it’s fair game. I’ll signup for ProQuo because it’s free.
UPDATE 10/25/2007: Just found another provider of junk mail elimination: 41pounds
October 24th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Hey Atul,
GreenDimes here. Just to let you, GreenDimes is now $15, one time only. It’s not free, but it’s easy and full service.
October 25th, 2007 at 1:06 am
Hi Sanjiv,
Thanks for the comment and good work on GreenDimes (seems like you’re the first mover). I’ve already tried ProQuo, but I’m going to give GreenDimes a shot too. I love the grassroot mantra behind GreenDimes, which is more engaging and educational. And you can’t go wrong with spending $15 and getting a tree planted in your name. The fight against junk-mail is worth fighting on all fronts.
Cheers, Atul
October 27th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Atul - it seems like ProQuo has a much larger mission around identity management from the composition of the founding team and some of the language in their privacy policy/terms of service. Any additional insights here? It seems like they are using this service as a trojan horse to get into providing other services to consumers ?
October 28th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
CPM Advisors - There must be a deeper intent because the company was “founded and led by pioneers who built key identity management and privacy infrastructure widely in use today”. Junk mail is a great first-step to target, especially if you consider that most consumers understand junk mail and would most likely glaze over if you spoke to them about Internet advertising and behaviorial targeting. I think the time will come for the latter. I would think anyone “assisting” the consumer this way will be considered a “trojan horse” unless its a .org or the EFF.
November 1st, 2007 at 9:07 am
[...] that are annoying or intrusive. Contacting the DMA and paying your dollar to be taken off lists or working with other services to do so will also reduce the volume of attention-sapping junk, but the do-not-track list will not do that. [...]
November 1st, 2007 at 9:07 am
[...] that are annoying or intrusive. Contacting the DMA and paying your dollar to be taken off lists or working with other services to do so will also reduce the volume of attention-sapping junk, but the do-not-track list will not do that. [...]