What is SPAM? Don’t Ask Digg. Or Gizmodo Readers.

It’s a topic that continues to fascinate me: When does talking about yourself become SPAM?

I purposely pose the question using those exact words, and start by acknowledging all the smart people whose answer is that one should never talk about yourself because it’s (fill in your favorite disparaging comment here).

But on the Internet, everything business-related is about self promotion. I believe that most people accept that idea, just as they accept that when you write a book you do a book tour and when you have a movie coming out you go on Letterman, Leno, O’Brien, and anywhere else that will have you.

Earlier this week I commented on a video. I thought the video was funny and entertaining, and I also thought it spoke to what we do here: at Answerguy Central, we teach our clients how to cope with change. So I included a link back to this blog, and got a pretty good amount of traffic from that link.

And then someone yelled at me.

Well boo-hoo. My skin isn’t so thin that I cared about that part, but it did make me think, yet again, about what SPAM actually is. Then I saw a piece talking about some changes in the way the Digg.com would be handling the information that users post, and I commented. And yes, my comment includes a link back to here, as well as a link to the information I was describing above.

Go ahead: read backward starting here.

So what is SPAM? If I sent out e-mails to people who haven’t asked to hear from me (notice I didn’t say “don’t want to hear from me”), then in commonly-accepted Internet terms I’ve spammed. But imagine you were in a discussion with a dozen people at a party, gave your opinion of the subject at hand, and then mentioned that you have some expertise. Isn’t that how people do business every day?

Or is this a whole new kind of change?