Thursday, February 14, 2008
Retraction
Um, in my last post, I spoke in error. Now if I were a major metropolitan newspaper, I'd run a correction on page two or three or so, tucked neatly in a corner. But I'm not a major metropolitan newspaper and I don't have a page two, so I will confess my error right up front in a new post, where all can see. (Besides, it'll give me another chance to blam about Classmates.com.)
Ahem, last night I stated that one has to be a "Gold" member of Classmates.com in order to send messages to other people on the site. As stated by Ruminator in a comment on the previous post, and as I belatedly discovered, this is not the case. Last night, after posting I got to thinking (I know, one should always do that before writing) that having to pay to both send and receive was a pretty lousy system, sure to alienate users. So I went back to the site and to my friend Giz's profile. Not only was I able to sign his guestbook, but I also was able to shoot him a brief message. Of course, that merely put the burden of paying for messaging rights back on him. For today I got a new e-mail from Classmates stating, "Oh No! Your Message Can't Be Read!". Horrors! The mail also advised me to "Switch to Gold membership so all your messages come through loud and clear." Hmmm. It appears that if I buy my way into the ranks of the privileged, I can be guaranteed of unhindered communications with all of my past schoolmates. Well, assuming they bother to write back, that is.
You know, I'm tempted just to send Giz another unreadable message. Then maybe he'd send another one back and I'd send another one and so on. And then I might start sending out messages to the other kids from my high school. And maybe they'll start sending back unreadable responses and it will all escalate into a cacophony of blocked messages. And maybe finally Mr. Classmates will get fed up and give us all complimentary Gold memberships, just so we'll stop filling their servers up with spam. That or they'll track down my favorite websites and buy onoxious banner ads for each of them. sigh. I used to like the internet.
Ahem, last night I stated that one has to be a "Gold" member of Classmates.com in order to send messages to other people on the site. As stated by Ruminator in a comment on the previous post, and as I belatedly discovered, this is not the case. Last night, after posting I got to thinking (I know, one should always do that before writing) that having to pay to both send and receive was a pretty lousy system, sure to alienate users. So I went back to the site and to my friend Giz's profile. Not only was I able to sign his guestbook, but I also was able to shoot him a brief message. Of course, that merely put the burden of paying for messaging rights back on him. For today I got a new e-mail from Classmates stating, "Oh No! Your Message Can't Be Read!". Horrors! The mail also advised me to "Switch to Gold membership so all your messages come through loud and clear." Hmmm. It appears that if I buy my way into the ranks of the privileged, I can be guaranteed of unhindered communications with all of my past schoolmates. Well, assuming they bother to write back, that is.
You know, I'm tempted just to send Giz another unreadable message. Then maybe he'd send another one back and I'd send another one and so on. And then I might start sending out messages to the other kids from my high school. And maybe they'll start sending back unreadable responses and it will all escalate into a cacophony of blocked messages. And maybe finally Mr. Classmates will get fed up and give us all complimentary Gold memberships, just so we'll stop filling their servers up with spam. That or they'll track down my favorite websites and buy onoxious banner ads for each of them. sigh. I used to like the internet.
Labels: retraction, web, whining
