Many years ago, working a support desk at an ISP, I fielded calls from angry seniors who wanted to know why their dozens of email forwards were not getting delivered to their friends, who desperately needed to know about the Microsoft/AOL cash reward giveaway. Suffering through the message logs, I would find typo'd email addresses, blacklisting message, or whatever the cause of the day was. I'd then have to explain that email and the internet was "best effort", and there was no guarantee of delivery, even if you did manage to type the email address correctly.
Interesting now, how most people wave off email delivery as flaky, or accept that spam filters will eat the 5% of incorrectly classified mail.
Are social networks more or less reliable? Have we all become numb to the best efforts of the web? I'm not sure. I think it is interesting though. I wonder if those seniors still call up these days?
Interesting now, how most people wave off email delivery as flaky, or accept that spam filters will eat the 5% of incorrectly classified mail.
Are social networks more or less reliable? Have we all become numb to the best efforts of the web? I'm not sure. I think it is interesting though. I wonder if those seniors still call up these days?