Some fun facts for this wonderful Monday:

• 94% of all email traffic is spam, according to this article from the New York Times.  Think about that – 94% – if you were to round that off, you might as well just say that all of it is spam.
• InformationWeek estimates the cost of spam in terms of lost productivity has reached $21.58 billion annually.
• ISPs have used the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 to try to sue to recover the cost of email spam, with poor results according to Wikipedia.

So where does this all go from here?  I suspect that social media could end up being the answer.  Eventually we’ll be weighting information from friends, followers or whatever we call our “nominated sources” that we’re not going to see information that hasn’t in some way been vouched for.  It may even come down to services vouching for “social reputation” which would actually allow the crowd to self-moderate.  Spammers can’t live in this environment, at least not for very long.  We’ll quickly learn that new accounts and people we who come unrecommended by someone else are no less than social media vampires waiting to be invited in.

This is where the “pay to post” bloggers are going to lose out.  In my view, the most important thing we can have is our reputation.  Without it, you’ll be outside the trust circle looking in, and that’s going to be a heck of a place to be.

Your thoughts?