Cloud Computing: US Start-Up Born to Make War on Junk Mail
February 17, 2012
Just when the US Postal Service looks down for the count, a self-funded Seattle start-up called PaperKarma figures its destiny is to suppress junk mail on which the post office depends.
The company was started by Sean Mortazavi, who hasn’t given up his day job at Microsoft yet, and PaperKarma’s sole employee Brendan Ribera. The pair has developed a free multi-platform mobile app that lets junk mail-inundated protesters take a picture of the junk mail flooding their mailbox, hit an "Unsubscribe" button and send it to PaperKarma.
The start-up will automatically pass it on to the mailer with Federal Trade Commission-enforced instructions that the recipient be dropped from its mailing list…
Mortazavi and Ribera reportedly spent a year collecting the names of the appropriate people at 10,000 of the biggest junk mailers such as the so-called privacy officers or customer advocates responsible for deleting names from mailing lists and its system automatically matches them to the e-mailed suppression request. It’s a system that’s constantly being updated and expanded.
According to AllThingsDigital, PaperKarma uses Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to track down the mailer. It says "Turk typically can track down people for hire at a reasonable price."
The scheme was in beta for a few months and PaperKarma claims companies are honoring its suppression requests. It’s posted a sample of confirming letters on its blog.
Most reputable companies reportedly comply though it could take weeks to purge an address completely from their database, particularly in case of pre-printed mail. But PaperKarma says it can stop junk mail carpet-bombed over an entire postal code or mail route.
PaperKarma says it will check back with users in a few months to see how the suppression is going.
According to the start-up, 100 billion pieces of junk mail flow through the US post office a year on its way to clogging the public’s mailbox, land fill operations and recycling centers. And that’s besides wasting resources like trees. That’s 800 pieces of junk mail per household a year, most of it unopened. According to government data that makes for a ratio of wanted to unwanted mail of 1:18.
Users have to register and divulge to PaperKarma the address and phone number the offending junk mail is going to. After that all it needs to work is some idea who sent the junk mail. It could just be a logo. The return address would be better. The specific offer better yet. It could be coupons, catalogs, postcards or sealed letters.
The app works with iPhone, Android and Windows Phone.
TechCrunch says if PaperKarma catches on, the scheme could eventually be used for opting into certain offers like electronic coupons that the start-up would get paid for while the mailer would save printing and postage costs.
PaperKarma joins a digital substitution trend that includes Zumbox, doxo, manilla.com, Earth Class Mail and soon Volly and OutBox.