Gigglebit is Siliconrepublic’s daily dose of the funny and fantastic in science and tech, to help start your day on a lighter note. Today we look at networking, errors and opportunism.
When 16-year-old James Corneille emailed a shed-load of contacts during the week to promote his web design skills, it’s fair to assume he didn’t expect it to spawn a trending Twitter hashtag, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn group, a meet up and an emphatic, new networking group burgeoning with fresh, ludicrous ideas.
Corneille did what we’ve all done at some stage, he took his eye off the ball when pressing send. Rather than BCC’ing his entire list of LinkedIn contacts (in the hundreds), he just outright emailed them all, sharing a swathe of contacts that ideally you usually want to keep hidden.
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The original mail
Rather than receive exclusively snotty responses (although they were included, dotted throughout the sprawling email train), those in receipt of this message took it in good spirits, and started chatting with each other.
The result? #accidentalspambuddies, where their warped ideas eventually spilled out into the wild. ‘Saas’, sandwich as a service, was proposed following the bizarre bouncing of ideas. ‘Esaas’, egg sandwich as a service, seems to have been the precursor.
Mockup of future app. #accidentalspambuddies, credits to Tara! pic.twitter.com/ei8vNFsU5N
— James Corneille (@JamesCorneille) March 11, 2015
It’s as yet unclear just how successful the sandwich information service is destined to be, presumably more successful than capitalism itself, although the geographical spread of those on the chain means the logistics of such could prove a nightmare.
Does the job
Another opportunistic thing to come out of just one strand of the email train is certain major tech companies tapping up the list, seeking out jobseekers ideal for some of the roles they are advertising. Basically any recruiters who were on ‘the list’ had access to potential candidates for roles they need filling.
There were students sharing their LinkedIn profiles to help get their foot in doors and even event organisers capitalising on the perfect opportunity to promote.
We’ve seen responses from people both sides of the atlantic, with the odd angry recipient begging to be removed from an email chain that has now, seemingly, migrated over to LinkedIn.
Althoough it reached such a level that some people were getting angry glares from our email overlord, Gmail.
Ha ha, got locked out by gmail for suspicious activity on my account due to #accidentalspambuddies :))))
— Lucian Leonte (@lgleonte) March 12, 2015
Gmail has detected ‘unusual activity’ on my account. Need a verification code to log back in. #accidentalspambuddies
— Sylvia Leatham (@SylviaLeatham) March 12, 2015
What a way to network, James. Although not everyone on the list was even aware of this acute communications explosion, with a certain Silicon Repubilican oblivious to the whole thing!
Delighted to be part of #accidentalspambuddies Read all about it here: http://t.co/MGugnAypvh #Dublin #Tech pic.twitter.com/0Cd3yh1d6v
— Rogue (@RogueIreland) March 12, 2015
I’m glad the #accidentalspambuddies list got my gmail & not work email, I’d be twice as unproductive (and hungry with all the saas images!)
— Colin Guilfoyle (@colinbrew) March 12, 2015
And someone’s created #accidentalspambuddies event for this Friday at Hangar: http://t.co/0Yp1QbQPHJ 🙂
— whykay (@whykay) March 11, 2015
Delighted to be one of the privileged #accidentalspambuddies . Less delighted that my OCD forced me to read every single email reply
— Daniel Ramamoorthy (@mynameisdanram) March 12, 2015
Out of control email image, via Shutterstock
