Computers Today, August, 1998 Offline

August 1998 OFFLINE

The Lifecycle of a Mailing List

By Sarita Agarwal

Someone with a passion for something, anything, decides he wants to connect with others like himself and starts a list or newsgroup. It really could be just about anything--there are lists for Scientific Research on Psychedelic Drugs and a newsgroup called alt.conspira cy.princess-diana. What's the difference between a mailing list and a newsgroup? Well, as someone once put it, a mailing list is like having a few friends round for a beer. A newsgroup is like putting a big sign up at the edge of town saying "free beer at my place". Wish I'd said that! Well, at least I passed them on.

Outlet to Vent Passion

Coming back to our man with a passion and his mailing list:

For six months, there are only six members. All use it as the perfect soapbox to vent their passions and frustrations. It's a hexalogue of the deaf, as no one is really listening to anyone else. All are blissful. They stop going to their respective therapists. Someone, the list owner's newly returned-from-Palo-Alto-brother-in-law, suggests the list owner send in details to the NEW-LIST list. He even organises it. Suddenly there is a membership spurt. Like 300 join in 1 week!

More people join the list, including some local celebrities. There's lots of mail. New perspectives. Sharing. Value. Community. Discussions. Interactions. Friendships. Evangelism. Recruitment strategies, which aren't really needed, because people are flooding in. The list is a success.

Members keep signing up. List membership grows exponentially. There's plenty of mail and messaging. Manufacturers make probes about advertising to list members and sponsoring the list. One sucker actually signs up for six months. There is media coverage. Suddenly, it's way cool to be an active participant on the list.

Gradual Increase in Volume

Someone's private mail, a stinker to his branch accountant gets posted to the list by accident. No one minds, after all Binky is a jolly good guy, they got a jolly good laugh out of it, and what are accountants for anyway. Some wierdos post dirty jokes. This time, they're told, firmly but politely that they're off-topic and to please message in private. They comply.

Volumes are becoming too much for the owner to handle. A decision is taken to automate the list. In the process, everyone who asked for the "digest" option gets reset to individual posts again. Once again, tempers rise. After three days, the list owner decides the experiment is a failure and reverts to his manual list. Two weeks later, someone helps move the list to a new server and this time, it succeeds. The core group goes out to celebrate and has a rollicking good time.

People start complaining about the volumes of irrelevant messages. The sentimental sigh over the good old times and try to whip up nostalgia and a return to the olden times, but fail miserably and retire to lurk.

Growth in Members

The list now has 3,000 members but the participation and quality of discussion is far inferior to when there were just 750. Some members leave, because: There are too many messages, too many junk: There is too little meaningful discussion and too much meaningless aggro; That big Y2K project they had bid for three months ago has come through and they will be leaving for Cincinatti Friday week. With the connectivity problems they're having, the list would need to be exceptional for them to stay subscribed; and as things stand, there's too much noise and too little signal.

Someone, in one last attempt to retrieve the situation, suggests: The list become moderated; The list be split up into smaller lists, so that both the serious and frivolous are taken care of; Some love the idea and confess it would be incentive to stay subscribed; Others are extremely offended and snap at the person who had the temerity to make the suggestion. He unsubscribes. The list owner's silent--he's trying to broker a BPR proposal between a 500-crore company and a newly established consulting service, and the commission from that will be ... wow. The list was just something he'd started when he was younger and had more passion and time.

The server malfunctions and 100 copies of the Digest are sent to all subscribers. The proverbial last straw! All the oldies unsubscribe. The dropouts now exceed the additions and list membership finally hits the declines.

Our list owner concludes his deal, pockets his commission, puts the list to sleep and goes off to Australia to put a shrimpie on the barbie.

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