Earlier this month, Judge James B. Zagel became part of the email marketing industry’s history with his ruling on the landmark e360 Prospect vs. Comcast case. In his decision, Zagel dismissed all of e360’s claims outright, while keeping in play Comcast’s countersuit against the company. Ouch.

To me, the most fascinating of e360’s four charges was that by Comcast blocking their emails from being received by its subscribers, the ISP was essentially in violation of the First Amendment and the right to free speech. Interestingly enough, the judge agreed that “the idea of blocking seems at odds in some way with free speech protection, even though there are limits imposed on the free speech protection of commercial speech, which is, I infer, the principal, if not the only, business of e360.”

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The World Wide Web is a huge vast source of information that aims to get organized. All kinds of websites, directories, and portals are trying to solve this task, but ultimately it is best left to the search engines to do this. While we use the Web to talk to each other, to entertain ourselves, amongst other reasons, when it comes to trying to find some sort of information, we will most likely use search engines.

Search engines can be machine-powered or human-driven although the latter efforts have largely been failures. The reason is simple: people can never be truly objective. Even the subjectivity of the majority is still not objective. The history of the humankind has lots of examples when the majority turned out to be simply wrong. That is why the human-driven search engines failed in bringing relevant results. The machines, on the other hand, have no emotions or preferences. They work under the algorithm, making them very objective and therefore a preferred method truly effective search engines.

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Recently as I was buying a new pair of cross-trainers at a mall sporting goods shop, one of the cashiers started having problems with her register tape. She paused, then exclaimed: “Oh. Em. Gee!”

Translation: OMG. Translation of that: Oh. My. God!

And that’s when I knew that SMS abbreviations are now an official part of popular lexicography. Sure, there are some language conservatives, the kind who probably don’t even like to use contractions, who will scoff, or decry the destruction of the English language, or dismiss usage of text-speak as a mere fad—like they’re today’s versions of “the cat’s meow” or “daddy-o.”

But they’re wrong. For marketers, understanding SMS acronyms (and emoticons, which are pictures drawn with words, letters, and/or punctuation marks, like the ubiquitous smiley face) is as important as any grammatical rule about pronouns or verbs.

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It would be nice to say we’re living in times of plenty. Truth is the emperor’s wearing no clothes and everyone sees it but no one wants to say it… I can barely say it myself… ‘recession?’ When every last dollar needs to be stretched to the max, one the best ways to start and maintain a conversation with your clients is with original strategies tailored to your business. Mobile marketing is one cost effective way to make the most of your dollars and get right into the pocket of your target audience.

If you need extra encouragement, try this… ask the next ten people you run into what device they can’t live without? You’re likely to get the answer-handheld or personal cellular phone. With such a high penetration like that it’s no wonder more and more companies are starting to use this powerful messaging platform.

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