Email Service Providers (ESP)

There’s an interesting post on Adrian Short’s blog about the “Web underclass”—those of use who use free Web services and have no control over the content that we post, how it is used, how we can retrieve it, etc. In essence, Adrian is saying there are three tiers of a Web experience:

• If you pay for a domain, you own and control the content and experience.
• If you pay to use services on someone else’s domain, you’re a renter.
• If you use a free Web service, you’re a guest subject to the whims of the owner.

He makes a good point. While there are many good free Web services that provide significant value in a personal and business context, there are a number of serious risks that business decision makers should take into account when opting to run some aspects of their business using these free services, whether they intentionally do so or do so implicitly by not having policies or technologies in place to manage them.

Expanding on that theme, here are some questions that any organization’s decision makers should ask about their business operations:

• Should we use Facebook to market our company?
  Doing so can provide enormous exposure, but it also has some downsides that should be seriously considered, such as the presentation of your company information alongside adverts over which you have no control. For example, Infiniti of Chicago’s Facebook page that I’m viewing as I write this is presented along with adverts for the University of Phoenix, Seattle’s Lecosho restaurant, an SAP certification program and a company that can re-level and raise concrete floors—all good organizations, I’m sure, but these are offers attuned to Facebook’s perception of my needs and location, not Infiniti of Chicago’s.
• Should we use Twitter or other free social media tools instead of deploying a private social network?
  Again, Twitter is extremely useful, but it has some downsides: Twitter maintains a (sort of) archive of old tweets, but they are not obligated to do so; your employees can post anything they want to the world without any sort of controls unless you have deployed technology to monitor their behavior; and you are exposed to the potential for malware infiltration through short URLs, again unless you have deployed technology to protect your company.
• Should we allow the use of free Dropbox accounts to share and store content?
  Again, Dropbox is a great tool, but one with a less-than-perfect record for securing content, and they offer no guaranteed service levels or content preservation.
• For small businesses, should you use free Hotmail or Yahoo! accounts as your email address?
  Again, nothing wrong with these services per se, but you lose not only an advertising opportunity when you don’t use your own domain, but you also lose the ability to transport your email capabilities to other providers and you have less control over  your own content when you don’t use your own domain.

The issue here, whether you’re a huge multinational or a mom-and-pop operation, is to carefully consider the right balance between cost and control when it comes to the communication, social media, content management and other capabilities you need to run your business.