Mar 5, 2009
Twitter Is Not Poor Man’s Email
Google‘s CEO Eric Schmidt is on record here and here saying that Twitter is a “sort of poor man’s email”. I respectfully disagree.
Twitter is email lite. Twitter is the icing of email’s cake without the heavy filling. Twitter is the top of the muffin. Twitter is the sex without the wet spot (was that too much?).
Basically, Twitter is email – except without the Body of the email. It’s all Subject line. You don’t even have to specify the recipient. Ever wanted to send a message to somebody (or everybody) without specifying anybody and didn’t really want to say anything other than “I made it home”? Twitter is perfect for this.
Picture this:
From: Crankie Tech <dont@spam.me>
To: Everyone I Know <*@internet*.*>
Subject: I Made It Home
Date: Thu, 5 Mar 2009 17:08:27
Well, I made it home. That is all.
Sincerely,
Me
It’s short, but it’s easily 700 bytes longer than it needs to be, not including firing up the email client or web client, blah blah blah. With Twitter, on a single data-light web page you get:
I am home.
Or occasionally:
Twitter also relieves you of having to fish the odd spam out of your Inbox because, well, honestly, it’s all spam. However, it’s spam from people you know – which makes it only slightly less annoying because you asked for it.
