I called it “the hidden secret of Web site success” and it stimulated more notes to my own Web site, a-clue.com, than anything I've written in quite a time.

"The secret to a successful mass-market Web site lies in doing what 99 percent of companies avoid like the plague," I wrote. "Post your e-mail address. Post it publicly, post it proudly, post it everywhere you can.

"I know. Spambots are going to get you. Virus writers will find you. Every consumer and his Aunt Myrna is going to whine at you about their personal problems opening your packages of Sweetums Cereal.

"Great. Wonderful. That's just what you want."

Over the last few years the trend has gone in just the opposite direction. It's easy to see why.

Executives treasure their e-mail access as a way to reach inside the company, or to chosen confederates. Lower down the ladder everyone is afraid, not just of viruses, spams and the like, but of "Astroturf" campaigns (fake grassroots) of interest groups, or of suggestions by “consumer reporters” that people "take their complaints to the top."

So we have press releases where I can't find out who to contact, or how. We have "forms" for everything which don't draw a response. We have a vast pulling-up-of-the-drawbridge between the big companies running Web sites and their customers.

We also have a recession. It's not entirely a coincidence.

But before you get that image of Mr. Big Cheese spending his entire day picking through Outlook Express and never getting anything done, let's get a few things straight first.

If you're running a Fortune 500 company this doesn't have to be your own, real, private Pop3 e-mail box you're using. It doesn't have to be answered by you, either. You can create procedures for handling this e-mail traffic just as you do your paper mail, where you don't look at 99.9 percent that comes in the door.

In the real world filtering is a cost of doing business. You have a mail room, and procedures. Why should e-mail be any different?

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dana Blankenhorn  (danablankenhorn@mindspring.com) is the author of the new book, The Blankenhorn Effect: How to Put Moore's Law to Work for You, available at Amazon.Com.