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November 07, 2007
Email Alerts: The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly
Description
If you read my post on email alerts, you already are aware about what I think about them. But what did my peers think? As a class, we were required to each take a look into these alerts -- how did they fare overall? In this post, I will take you through what my classmates considered to be the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The Good
What a suprise! The largest stock in the market creates the largest boom in email alerts as well. Overall, individuals with the last name of K-Z found Google Alerts to be the top choice of email alert systems. In fact, approximately three out of every four people would prefer Google Alerts against other alerts. Why did they think that? Well, for a number of reasons. Take for instance, Dane Rook, who found that Google Alerts was far easier to assemble a query; Jon Montville thought Google Alerts served as a great way to keep up with information you needed on a daily basis; Carolyn Rhode found it to be a great access system into the Blogs of the web. I guess Google really may have everything....
Constant Data Feeds
For the most part, people LOVED not having to do work (Another suprise!) and enjoyed that Email alerts brought all of your work to you. In fact, everyone loved it. Now, everyone didn't always love the frequent emails, something we will discuss later, but the consistency of information was a frequent plus for the class.
Potpourri of Information Types
Within the search results, almost everyone who touched on reasons why they liked Email Alerts spoke about the plethora of information the alerts provided. Blogs, Websites, Images, Videos, you name it and these alerts were sending them. This broad aspect to the information enabled the alerts to be a "one stop shop" for information trappers.
The Bad
Emails, Emails, Emails
Gah! 5 emails a day everyday for months on end! This is the reaction of a number of people to email alerts. This aspect was either, "you love it" or "you hate it" -- as seen by the fact most people enjoyed the information, but not the buildup of it. Obviously I discussed my distaste for the flow in my post, but other users expressed their dislikes as well including Steven Richards and Joe Zatkoff.
In fairness, some people did enjoy using Yahoo Alerts, but since most people tended to favor Google Alerts it seemed as if Yahoo Alerts were pushed into the background. Dane Rook's, for example, hated Yahoo's inability to establish relevant search categories. This led him to "attempt to set up alerts for some of my existent RSS feeds." Clearly individuals were able to make due with what Yahoo had to offer. However, in total, people seemed to have to work harder to make it work, and that forced some level of resentment. An additional problem a number of students found was Yahoo's inability to preview the search beforehand. As Kai Schultheis put it, "It would be, however, much more convenient if you could play around with your query within the Yahoo! Alerts portal."
Paying for Alert Systems
GoogleAlert, for real, enter into the 21st Century whenever you feel like it's time.
The Ugly
Filtering Options
A number of people expressed their desire to be able to filter their searches even more within the Alert systems. This fits natually with the natural resentment the students exhibited in their blogs towards working hard and placing a great deal of time establishing a search query. I guess there is a consistent desire for a "one stop shop" version, where you can type in your short query and modify it 4329843290472390 ways (please note, sarcasm).
Overall, there wasn't too much ugliness about these email alerts. A majority of King - Zeitoun found them to be very helpful and plan on using them in the near future. I guess that's not too shabby for something most people had never used ever before, oh, a month ago.
See you next week for my blog on RSS Feeds!