5 ms·
> How about a communications infrastructure spanning ... tcp/ip? The infrastructure has been here for a long time. The reason why people start to "connect" wit
by leon_ 16y ago
> How about a communications infrastructure spanning ...
tcp/ip? The infrastructure has been here for a long time. The reason why people start to "connect" with everybody now is because computers and mobile IP devices are becoming really cheap. People would be still communicating in realtime without twitter, facebook, co. SMTP, IRC and IM protocols were here before Mr. Zuckerberg knew how to spell PHP.
- sedachv 16y agoThis is the really depressing thing about the hype from this bubble. "Web scale" is decentralized open protocols over full unrestricted IP, not shitty NATed HTTP to a rack of servers in the US.
- swombat 16y agoThose were computer-to-computer, not people-to-people. The only people who could use those were technical. Facebook, Twitter, et al, built a communication infrastructure between people. That's about much more than just programming or designing computer communication protocols. It's a common fallacy from programmers to think that the hard part of "build a system for 100 million users" is the programming.
- leon_ 16y agoStrange, my nonprogramming mother can send emails without problems. (And finds Facebook horribly confusing.)
- swombat 16y agoEmails are a very unproductive way to handle communications between hundreds of people in your social network. They provide no ambient awareness of what's going on with the people you know. They were people-to-people communication infrastructure, sure, in the same way as a dirt road is a road. But there's a big difference between an 8-lane highway and a dirt road, and there's as big a difference between email and twitter. Both are a kind of infrastructure.
- _delirium 16y ago90s AOL users were technical?