Old media collides with the new (an ongoing series)

Wired magazine is owned by Conde Nast, the magazine giant.

Wired has a priceless double opt in permission email list. It's a great list of forward thinking people who actually WANT to hear from Wired.

If you wanted to make some short term cash, maybe to hit your budget numbers, you could sell/rent that list. You could probably articulate some sort of rationalization, point out the terms of service or the privacy policy, but no matter what, you'd be doing something short-term and stupid. Sending a car ad to this list serves only one purpose: to benefit the sender, not the recipient.

1. you've trained people not to open your mail
2. you've used up priceless attention
3. you wasted an asset instead of building one.

Thanks, Andy, for the heads up.