Canned Spam Verse Internet Spam. The Battle For The Keyword Spam
Canned SPAM
I’m not sure if there is anyone on the planet who never tried canned Spam, whether you like it or not. I was never a big fan making sandwiches out of Spam, but if you fry it up until it just starts burning right after the bubble appears it goes very well with eggs.
Just over 30 years ago Spam only meant one thing, a peculiar canned ham product that was pretty popular. Now most of us think of “Internet Spam” when we hear the word.
I’ve been doing some research on who coined the phrase “SPAM” from various internet sources. I have found 2 different answers, and I have no idea who is correct.
1) I read a forum comment by a man named Edward Falk. He said it was originated in 1985 :
The original use in a computing context was in 1985 when someone harassed a Pern MUSH by echoing “SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM…” repeatedly while the users were participating in a significant (for them) online event. He was kicked off by the administrators, but afterwards was known as “that guy who spammed us”. The term stuck, and the rest was history.
This seems to be possible because of the number of articles I found related to the origin of the word “SPAM”.
2) The rest of the internet community seems to think it was derived from a Monte Python skit. I personally buy the first one, but I can now see the relation to the Monte Python Video:
With this new definition of spam, I often wonder if this was a crisis for the company that makes Spam, Hormel Foods? Today, SPAM can be seen as an almost dirty word within the internet community. However, when I hear the word “Spam” coming from people like Matt Cutts from Google, (Head Of Google’s SPAM TEAM) I cannot help but to also thinking of having slighteley burned SPAM and eggs for breakfast tomorrow morning.
I’m sure this did kind of freak them out, even to this day. They actually have a comment about SPAM on their website (you really should read this).
What made me think of this SPAM post was the keyword “Spam”. I’m sure the makers of canned spam were forced to work extra hard to be sure they rank well on the keyword “SPAM”. If you Google the term, it will show over 223,000,000 pages. Now this is a word used every day in tweets, blog posts, emails, etc…
I would like to congratulate Hormel Foods for effectively owning the Keyword “SPAM” on all three major search engines.
If you are still not sure between the difference of Spam & Spam (spammer), maybe this will help:
This is a fried SPAM & Egg Sandwich. I highly recommend trying one.
Internet SPAM is tough to photograph, so here is a photo of a spammer:
Edward “Eddie” Davidson
Last year Edward Davidson was sentenced to 21 months in Federal prison, and fined $714,139 for being the alleged “King Of Spam”.
