Word of the Week: Bacn

Bacn: E-mail that isn't spam but isn't what you really want or need, either. A truncation of "bacon" (chosen probably for its culinary relationship to Spam), bacn was coined during PodCamp Pittsburgh, held August 18 and 19, 2007.

Virtually overnight, a blog, Bacn2, was launched. There was an official bacn press release, in which the new word is defined as "email you want -- just not right now":

Bacn has been said to be the “middle class of email.” It’s notifications of a new post to your Facebook wall or a new follower on Twitter. It’s the Google alert for your name and the newsletter from your favorite company.

You can already buy the bacn T-shirt (proceeds donated to charity). And within less than a week, the neologism made it into New York Times's "What's Online" column, written by Dan Mitchell (see final item).

Comments

[sgazzetti]

While I do think that there's a need for a word to describe this "middle class of email", I wonder how well this one will stick. It feels contrived (the 'web 2.0' truncation, semantic relationship to Spam), and, as a commenter on a MetaFilter thread wrote recently, "Bacon is 'something you want, but not right now'? Bollocks. I want bacon now. I always want bacon..."

We'll see if people want 'bacn'.

[John]

+1. The apostophe is pseudo-trendy and a distraction. Why didn't they just call the stuff "bacon"?

[Night Writer]

Mmmmmm, Bacn.