

Google CEO: Twitter a "poor man's email system" - fromedome
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-ceo-twitter-a-poor-mans-email-system-2009-3

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pg
I assume he realizes that anything of the form "poor man's x" is extremely
dangerous. Microcomputers were once the poor man's computer, video the poor
man's film, etc.

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madh
On some level Google was, for me, a poor man's internet. My initial use of it
for months was for the cached pages which would actually load on my terrible
Packard Bell with dial-up in 2000.

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fromedome
I don't think he's being disparaging, but it was definitely an interesting
choice of words

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whughes
From a technological point of view, I think he's spot on. However, from a
technological point of view I don't think any of what we've seen in the last
ten years is really groundbreaking. Facebook doesn't really bring anything new
to the table outside of maybe scaling; it ties together all the social
connectivity that the Web can offer and makes it available to the common
person. We're seeing services package up the technology and provide it to the
average person, who now has access to the Internet. Twitter absolutely could
have been done ten or twenty years ago (given a platform, of course), but no
one had the idea and few could use it easily. That's the key.

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TrevorJ
That makes no sense. A: Email is free already so who needs a 'poor mans'
email? And B: Twitter is nothing like email in terms of it's function and use.

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dopeyman
It'll do in a pinch, though -- e.g., when Gmail is down.

