What is Bacn?
Bacn, which is pronounced bacon, is an alternative to email spam. Though both these terms are of food origin, they actually refer to different types of email that you can receive. Spam is unsolicited “junk mail” that shows up in your email box. You don’t want this stuff and as far as you know, you didn’t sign up for it, or give the sender permission to send it to you. Spam includes scam emails, unsolicited advertisements, and occasionally malicious viruses meant to wreak havoc on your computer system. On the other hand, Bacn — a term coined at the Podcamp Pittsburg 2, an unconference bar camp held in August of 2007 — is email you’ve actually signed up to receive. Such email could come from companies with which you’re registered, even sales companies or retail outlets offering you special details, newsgroups, blogsites, social networks or a variety of other sources. Unlike spam, which you usually don’t intend to read, most people want to read their Bacn — eventually. But like spam, it i
According to the bloggers who invented the term just a few weeks ago, bacn is e-mail you want to read — just not now. It’s Facebook notifications, bank statements, Google news alerts, or any of the other sundry e-mails that you asked for, yet quickly pile up unread—like a week’s worth of newspapers. “It’s not spam you signed up for it, and you actually do want that information. But yet it still feels like it’s wasting your time,” says Tommy Vallier, a Canadian blogger who helped invent the term at a recent conference in Pittsburgh. Vallier says he receives about 150 pieces of bacn every day and so do his friends. Bacn is so-named because it’s better than spam, but not as good as a personal e-mail. And unlike spam, bacn is self-inflicted. The catchy (some say annoying) term is new but the phenomenon, of course, is not. People have been receiving quasi-important e-mail (“personal spam,” some call it) for years. The volume, though, is increasing. More and more companies and news organizat
How do you manage your Bacn? I know you have email folders lettered with bold text followed by a two or three-digit number clogging up your inbox. Email is our generation’s main form of communication, but sometimes it’s hard to keep up with. We check it 10 times a day or more, and we are getting better at managing it. Our eyes rarely give more than one second of time to viewing a spam message. We hit delete right away. But, even websites that we visit two or three times a day are still infecting our inboxes with extra k. There are so many social networks nowadays that we have to manage multiple email addresses to filter second-tier, or junky email. Usually, our Yahoo account serves this purpose. Bacn is an email message that is too sophisticated to be junk, but something you just don’t have time to read. Like: • Google Alerts • Twitter adds • Any Facebook email • New signup confirmation emails • Some Pownce emails • WordPress comment moderations I like bacn because it’s quick informati
No, it’s not the delectable bacon that you eat for breakfast, instead it’s the new term for emails that are a cross between spam and personal mail. Here’s a message regarding Bacn from the people who coined the new word: Bacn is a new problem now plaguing our email inboxes. Putting it simply, Bacn is email you receive that isn’t spam… And isn’t personal mail. It’s the middle class of email. It’s notifications of a new post to your Facebook wall or a new follower on Twitter. It’s the Google alert for your name and the newsletter from your favorite company. We are a group of like-minded individuals who have realized the problem of bacn, and are out to find a solution. You can now join the discussion in our forum and help us further define bacn as we begin our efforts to manage our bacn. Bacn was first used during an impromptu discussion about email and spam during Podcamp Pittsburgh. The slogan for Bacn might give you some more insight as to what it actually is: “Email you want, but not
