4 ms·

But one thing I never thought of Twitter as was Poor Man's Email, which is how Google CEO Eric Schmidt described it to analysts yesterday. ... I couldn't imagi

by davi 18y ago

But one thing I never thought of Twitter as was Poor Man's Email, which is how Google CEO Eric Schmidt described it to analysts yesterday. ... I couldn't imagine two things being more different, Twitter and email. 1. Twitter is primarily one-to-many, where email is primarily one-to-one. 2. Twitter is by default public, where email is by default private. So why would Schmidt equate them, if they are so different? This is the interesting question raised by the post. I'm not sure how to answer it; but my guess is that the answer is unlikely to be found by thinking about the details of the SMS protocol.

gry 18y ago
Winer's argument rides on adding metadata, ergo why the SMS discussion is important. For Google to play in his argument, they need to solve the SMS problem, or ignore it altogether. The way I see it, since both are communication tools, this is why are equal. They soon diverge. The public and ad-hoc nature is where it is substantially different. A gross simplification of primary use cases: IM: 1 to 1, private, active Email: 1 to 1, private, active Twitter: 1 to many, public, passive -> active The passive/aspect of the conversation becomes more organic in a public space -- changes into an active conversation when someone tweets back. Why would he equate them? Only because it's a textual communication medium, IMHO. GTalk is in a way, an extension of GMail. If you're not there, it pops in your inbox. I don't see Twitter merging with email until it becomes part of the active conversation, something which should be pointedly and purposefully in your inbox.
aston 18y ago
Here's my best stab at it, from the perspective of a guy who saw the internet in its infancy (not myself): Email was the first great asynchronous digital mass communication tool built on the store-and-forward idea. Twitter (or SMS'd tweets, really) is another, much more limited form of the same technology.

by davi 18y ago

gry 18y ago

Winer's argument rides on adding metadata, ergo why the SMS discussion is important. For Google to play in his argument, they need to solve the SMS problem, or ignore it altogether. The way I see it, since both are communication tools, this is why are equal. They soon diverge. The public and ad-hoc nature is where it is substantially different. A gross simplification of primary use cases: IM: 1 to 1, private, active Email: 1 to 1, private, active Twitter: 1 to many, public, passive -> active The passive/aspect of the conversation becomes more organic in a public space -- changes into an active conversation when someone tweets back. Why would he equate them? Only because it's a textual communication medium, IMHO. GTalk is in a way, an extension of GMail. If you're not there, it pops in your inbox. I don't see Twitter merging with email until it becomes part of the active conversation, something which should be pointedly and purposefully in your inbox.

aston 18y ago

Here's my best stab at it, from the perspective of a guy who saw the internet in its infancy (not myself): Email was the first great asynchronous digital mass communication tool built on the store-and-forward idea. Twitter (or SMS'd tweets, really) is another, much more limited form of the same technology.