Overstuffing ourselves with bacn

Wednesday, August 22, 2007 | Pew Internet Posts

As we reported earlier this year, more Americans than ever say the volume of spam in their inboxes is increasing. Yet, while these internet users are receiving more spam, they also say that they are less bothered by it than before.

Better filters and a decrease in the most offensive types of messages reaching our inboxes may partially explain respondents' tempered response to spam. However, it's not just unsolicited email that crowds our inboxes these days.

"Bacn" (misspelling intentional), the new tech buzzword of the moment, has emerged as the term of art for that other class of annoying-but-not-quite-spam messages that often sit unopened for days or quickly move to the bottom of the priority pile. These are the burdensome messages that we bring upon ourselves, the online statements from our cell phone company, the friend request messages from our social networking accounts, and any other number of automatically-generated messages that aren't unsolicited, but aren't always welcomed with eager and open arms either.

(See yesterday's CNET post for a digital trail of the term's genesis.)

However, it's not yet clear whether this term will stick to the pan, so to speak…

Posted by Mary Madden at 17:22 PM | Link to This Entry

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