Sending me info about products

On one hand, I could junk them. I didn’t ask to receive them, so you could argue they’re spam. Moreover, they came to my private e-mail address and not for work address.

On the other hand, they’re not “v1agra-spam” that my junk filter takes care of. These are emails that people have sent specifically to me, because they like this blog and/or they know I work at Skype. So simply deleting these mails would mean that some info that would be valuable would get lost in space, and I could be perceived as a mean and disrespectful person and possibly damage some good business that could otherwise be made. I don’t really want to be perceived like that, so I’d better do something about them. (I’m just describing if I were at the end of the tube sending the email, what would I think. “Do unto others as you want them to do unto thyself” is a good way to analyse such matters.)

So here’s the deal. If you send me some info about a product, I will post it on this blog.

I will do this according to the following “terms”.

• I don’t guarantee I’ll publish anything. If I find your mail boring, abusive, overly intrusive or irrelevant, I’ll delete it without further notice and it’s thus junk that gets lost in space.
• there’s no guarantee when I publish. It may happen ten minutes after you send it, or it may happen in two months or half a year. (The latter ones may be more valuable because your email captures a particular point in time, and when I take a look it will be at a later point, and comparison between the two may be interesting.)
• I promise I’ll take a look at what your product is about, and develop my own interpretation/impression of it, that I’ll add in the post. It does not mean that I’ll install it or give it a full run. Most likely I’ll just click through a few pages on your site, so you’d better make the initial experience really good to keep me interested. I might also install the software if it’s a client product, but then again, I might not.
• I’ll publish your original email either in full, or edited into a shorter version, but I’ll maintain your original wording.
• I’ll publish your name and contact details. In the context of this blog, it doesn’t matter and neither hurts nor advantages you if you’re working with the actual vendor or their PR agency. I publish the name and contacts simply because I like talking with actual people, not anonymous robots. (Corollary: if you don’t identify yourself in the email properly or it’s anonymous or clearly fake, see first bullet above, it gets axed.) Among others, this blog is also read by a lot of Skype people, as well as what we call people in the “ecosystem”, and many other people I know from other various places, so there’s a good chance that some people reading this might be at least marginally interested and they might want to follow up, which they can then do directly using the provided contact details.
• to distinguish the reviews from other posts, I’ll tag them as “productreview”.
• I am NOT interested in hardware. Please do NOT send me any, unless I’ve specifically asked for it and we have agreed on it in advance. I’m a total gadget unfreak — if you dropped by my house, you’d be surprised by how LITTLE things I have. I don’t want extra stuff. And I don’t know what’s my address going to be for a given week or month, so I might not receive the shipment in the first place. If you want to push your Skype-related hardware product, please take a look at our Skype Gear blog where we are happy to do that.

Why not publish Skype-related stuff in the Share Skype blog that I also edit? Good question. I sometimes actually do if I find these products particularly relevant to the public. However, we tend to vet what we publish there, and I don’t put it up under my name if it doesn’t have my full backing and I haven’t give it a thorough run myself and don’t know anybody else in the office who has. Often, posting things on the Skype blog also happen as part of a larger partnership or campaign, which is a bit different from “cold-emailing” your product to people.

Some more tips.

• Your chances of success are directly dependent on how much homework you do about people who you’re e-mailing. Show in your e-mail why it’s relevant to me and as I often say, “why should I care”. References to my previous posts are always good.
• E-mailing me is not going to be your magic ticket into Skype or any other organization I’m affiliated with. If you would like to develop a partnership with Skype, please take a look at our partner programs. If you don’t find a readymade program, feel free to use our partner contact form and describe your suggestion in more detail.