E-mail signatures?

Interesting article in the Journal today regarding E-mail signatures. It mentions services like Meez where you can create your own "avatar" and include it in your e-mail signature. Evidently, this is a craze that is catching on - they report over 1 million registered users, with half of them joining in the first quarter of 2007. Crazy - I guess that is another entrepreneurial idea that passed me by.

I have to admit, I used to attach pithy comments to my e-mails, but have not done so for quite some time. This article makes me wonder, though, if we have now gotten to the point where the signature holds more "meat" than the e-mail message itself. I have noticed a trend recently where the signatures on e-mails are becoming more and more obvious and "in-your-face" than in the past, with graphics and company logos and such. It almost draws your attention to the signature before you read the message. And, my "pithy comments" didn't suck up extra bandwidth.

The article also mentioned John Edwards website, where it offers a download of an image that shows your support for his campaign. Great - more unsolicited advertising in my e-mails, only now it is coming from people I know, embedded in e-mails I want to read (or maybe not anymore...).

How far will this go? Maybe we need a new e-mail product that will strip e-mails of anything that is extraneous to the message in the body. Now that is a service I would pay for.