The thing about the personal cc: list is that you can never leave. People reply-all to use it, and requests to be removed have to be accomodated by every single person in the list. Which never works. So basically you are drafted in and can never leave.

The personal bcc: list doesn’t have that problem because nobody can email everybody except the originator of the mail blast. But then it’s like having a megaphone in your ear because you can’t answer back.

Luis, Bone’s thing was pretty quirky because it was so blatantly non-consensual. Nobody would ever have opted in, nobody could opt out, and Jeff used a variety of emails for his sender address so a filter to delete or file them all was a bitch to write.

The one thing I’ll use either of these for is my immediate family. Since none of them are on speaking terms with one another I’ll use a bcc: when I have personal news to share.

Piers, when you talk about filtering email through Twitter or LinkedIn, doesn’t it bug you to have your mailbox hostage to a transient account? What’s the benefit you have in mind?