[Spambayes] Two Stage Plan

Gary Robinson grobinson at transpose.com
Wed Dec 18 15:48:08 EST 2002


>> I'm currently working for a company in the transaction tracking and
>> aggregation business.  Transactions under about 5 cents still are a
>> net loss to the vendor, even with significant volumes.  The service
>> cost is high enough to keep the company afloat (that is, significant).
> 
> Ah good. Now we can talk about something interesting.
> 
> What is the basis of the 5 cents? Where does it go?
> 
> My thinking is that if MS is controlling the whole thing, putting $.01 from
> one person's account to another will take less overhead than an email, which
> costs nothing. I.e., I think the complexity comes in when multiple companies
> are involved. It is one more reason why such a solution would increase MS's
> monopoly power.  

Answering my own question, with a request for feedback:

Mainly it seems to me that if the transaction is between people's accounts
the expenses involve

1) Loading the account in the first place -- there would be a charge there.
The credit card company or would get some reasonable fee. Assuming this was
part of an MS software rental program, however, it would be pretty much
absorbed in the transaction to pay for that. Another $1 or $5 year out of
probably $50 or more is only going to get zinged by, I dunno, absolute 10%
max overall including the minimum fee and the percentage, which would be
$.001 overhead per $.01 transaction. (NOTE I am not an expert, at all, on
the exact fees here, but am just trying to get an overall sense of things,
please correct me.)

2) There is some expense for storing the data associated with each
transaction. I've been in the software biz for > 20 years, including having
full responsibility for the design of very large customer databases for what
used to be called New York Telephone. Given the cost of disk space these
days, and the efficiency of modern databases, my gut feeling, for what it's
worth, is that the cost of storing the transactions is negligible compared
to $.01.

3) There is expense for communications etc but you aren't sending email
unless you have that stuff covered, so that isn't an issue.

The above, again, assumes that only MS users are involved.

So I see a small overhead per email, well worth it to be rid of spam.
(Except of course MS would use its power to squeeze as much profit from each
person as they could once they've gotten everyone locked in; eventually it
wouldn't be so great a deal if they really do end up with control. So they
shouldn't have it. There should be some organization that the various email
software vendors participate in so that it has the one-vendor advantage of
MS without giving MS full control.)

I'm not the only one who thinks that the pay-to-play idea makes sense, at
least if it's under the control of MS. There are some very, very smart
people who do. If we're wrong because of the financial overhead you mention,
it would be good for us to understand that.




--Gary


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Gary Robinson
CEO
Transpose, LLC
grobinson@transpose.com
207-942-3463
http://www.transpose.com
http://radio.weblogs.com/0101454






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