Netiquette and Products Which Break The Rules - via Netiquette IQ

This blog offers many suggestions regarding sending and resending email. Furthermore, I discuss this topic extensively in my book, "Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email" (you can get more information below). Occasionally, I come across a product that, by its very nature, stretches or breaks the rules of Netiquette.The product reviewed below, is an example of one of these.

There is nothing wrong with sending or resending emails if done within Netiquette policies. By its very nature, the product below will keep sending emails until the user quits the process. This can perhaps achieve results in some cases, but it can also produce the opposite effect. Unless the user sets strict specific guidelines, it would not be good Netiquette to deploy this process.
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Meet Rebump, The New Worst Thing About Email

Posted Feb 28, 2014 by Alex Wilhelm (@alex), Josh Constine (@joshconstine)

Email is probably the bane of your life. There is too much of it, and there’s a special hate reserved for people who selfishly fill your inbox with balderdash.

Email is broken because it’s far easier to send someone a message that creates work for them than it is for them to do that work. So you can quickly make the lives of people worse, at little cost to yourself.

Today, not responding to email is implicitly stating that your note was not important enough to warrant a response. That’s appropriate! Not everything everyone thinks or says merits a response. What we want in life is less, not more email, right?

Yet a start-up called Rebump has found a way to make email even worse. How is that possible, you ask.? Well, Rebump is a service that automatically re-pings people — via email, of course — that haven’t answered your original message. It will keep doing so until you get a response.

Note that this implies that your initial email was both worth reading, and worth replying to. In reality most email fails both tests. So, Rebump is essentially a brilliantly passive aggressive way to force people into responding to you, or the flood of notes will not fucking stop.

In practice, this is how the company explains itself:

Yes, it made me nauseous as well.

Actually I can see this working in practice: By the 7th follow up I would reply to your note. With a congenial “**** off.” I guess if that is what you want, then great. I get that Rebump is trying to offer a service people will find useful, but if that utility comes from degrading everyone else’s life, it’s net negative for humanity.

If you are friends with someone and they don’t respond to your note, maybe they are busy. Maybe call them. Maybe let it slide, because you are not the most important thing in their life. Don’t use this. Don’t abuse their already overstuffed inbox. I don’t care if Rebump calls them “friendly follow-up messages.”

This is a friendly heads up that people will hate you if you Rebump.
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In addition to this blog, I have authored the premiere book on Netiquette, " Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email". You can view my profile, reviews of the book and content excerpts at:

 www.amazon.com/author/paulbabicki

 If you would like to listen to experts in all aspects of Netiquette and communication, try my radio show on BlogtalkRadio  and an online newsletter via paper.li.I have established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and  Yahoo.  I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and I have been contributing to the blogs Everything Email and emailmonday . My work has appeared in numerous publications and I have presented to groups such as The Breakfast Club of NJ and  PSG of Mercer County, NJ.