Recently, a new "class" of email has been defined - Bacn. It isn't spam, and it isn't email you are necessarily looking for, either. This middle class of email is designated to mostly email notifications, newsletters, and alerts you may have elected to receive but don't want them right away.

If you really think about it though, email is not the best way to communicate alerts and quick info like that. You can't reply to them, once you read them they're no longer useful, and so they're just dead weight in your inbox - one more thing for you to take time to manage.

I guess I've been dealing with Bacn before I even knew what it was - I've got folders set up to dump messages like alerts, notifications, etc. so they don't clutter my inbox. Even better, if I'm not near my computer alerts like that won't be sent to my Dash, which would make them even more annoying.

It kind of makes me appreciate Growl, an essential notification app. I love the way it pops information and then disappears. Unfortunately it's also not permanent, which makes it unsuitable for all types of notification.

Whether or not it needs its own term or not, looks like Bacn is here to stay. Maybe with a silly name and a presence it'll get in the minds of web and software developers and make them think about what types of information they should be invading our inbox with.