I receive a reply from Sitemeter!

Further to my email of two days ago, I was delighted to note a response in my email inbox. Mainly as I was hoping this would be the first step in making cold hard cash out of you lot.

Alas, the response read thusly…

From: “webmaster”
Sent: 03 April 2007 18:19
To: “Mister Angry”
Subject: Re: Commercial enquiry

Hello,

Thanks for your email.

The cookie you are seeing is from a trusted partner who we are working with to provide more intelligence to you about your visitors. In the past few days we’ve begun beta testing this cookie.

Over the next few months we will be rolling out enhancements to our service that will offer you more information about your users like their other content interests and demographics (a la Quantcast). In addition this cookie will allow us to offer other new useful features in the future, including tracking Unique Visitors, Heat Mapping etc.

We believe that this new information along with our current services we already provide will be of great benefit to our users. Keep watching our page for announcements regarding these upgrades and changes. We would also ask that you use discretion in sharing this information. We are trying not to show our hand to our competitors.

If you would rather not participate in this process we can offer you a couple options -

1 - If you replace your current Java code with the standard HTML Sitemeter code the cookie will no longer be issued.
2 - We can move you to a new server that will be restricted from the cookie process.

If you would like to move to the restricted server please let us know and we will create a new FREE upgraded account for you. We won’t be able to transfer any historical data, but you will still be able to log into your old account and view your old account stats.

Thanks,

The Sitemeter Team

No mention of the Commercial proposal I submitted to them! But the deal is not dead, far from it. At no point in that email did they say No! In my line of work this is almost a Yes!

So, I have decided to continue the dialogue.

Dear Webmaster,

Thank you very much for your email response. With Technorati suggesting that several thousand people are writing about you at the moment, I was delighted to see that you had taken the time to respond to my note. Even if you did not seem to be able to respond to me by my name. It is Mr. Angry for future reference, or Angry, or even Mr. A. I am not precious about it (but note how I call you by your name, Webmaster)

I am also glad that you were able to outline the reasons for introducing your new biscuit, though I have to admit that as the words flew passed me I managed to catch about as much as an England cricketer.

Do not worry however, I am not a geek who is interested in Quantcast or Heat mapping (or any other weapons of mass destruction). I am a business man. Which is why I was somewhat disappointed that you seem to have ignored my commercial proposal about sharing the revenue you are making from the new Sitemeter biscuits that are forced upon my unsuspecting visitors. However, I did notice that you did not say No!

I can only assume that this is a negotiating ploy, and this was merely a holding email whilst my proposal is discussed in the highest echelons of Sitemeter Towers. I am sure you will ultimately see that this revenue sharing opportunity will maximise the commercial benefits for us both. After all, the Internet was designed to exploit people who are bored at work, so we are merely continuing the work of our web-based forefathers, Tim Berners-Lee, Brent Hoberman and Perez Hilton.

I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest convenience to discuss the contractual arrangements. I would be happy to have my legal counsel draw up the contracts if you would prefer?

Kind regards,

Mr. Angry

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UPDATE : As reminded in the comments by Katy, there is a little bit of bonus Mr Angry action over at This is This today. One day only, get it whilst it’s hot.