Uhhh, email is free. How can something you pay a subscription fee on be a poor man's solution to something that is free?

What is Twitter? Seriously. I don't know anyone who uses it. I must be getting old.

Eric was probably thinking about the 160 character limit on SMS.

Hmm... I was going to visit Twitter for the first time, but my employers proxy seems to have banned the site, oh well. Does it really cost money to use twitter (besides the obvious SMS charges)?

I never understood what could be so damned important that you had to tell the world from your cell phone in 140-characters or less. The news has been all over the "tweets" from congress men and women during Obama's speech, and not a one of them (tweets nor news stories) had any value to anyone.

It might be fun to twitter with your friends, and lord knows most of what I do on the internet has no value to society, but really, to say twitter is anything other than a toy would be giving it too much credit.

I agree with him. Twitter sucks. I also thing the same about all "social networking" sites, facebook, myspace, you name it.

Flame me all you want but I really fail to see the point of having to know and let everyone know of what's going on around.

With such a great CEO, I have to ask myself when I go to do a search, "why oh why do I always avoid using google?" I guess the reason is that google is full of worthless people who think extremely highly of themselves. Yeah, they have some nice things out there, but compared to their EGO, it is pathetic.

I agree re: social networking sites. I never understood the billion dollar valuations that wall street placed on these "business concepts". It seems that every few years a new fad comes along and everyone falls in love with it and of course it will make MS and Google obsolete ... and then one year later the fad has passed.

Who still uses myspace?

man talk about hubris, he a gazillianair and envious, jelous he didn't create twitter, what is google, but a company where nowhere to go but down.

wait...what? twitter isn't free? Now that would be the most stupid thing on earth ...paying to "announce the world when you poop"

Hey...that guy with the first comment mislead me. Darn it i almost laughed my pants off thinking you have to pay for twitter.

I heard about it before, but never bothered with it ... so I decided to google it I failed to see any practical use for it. It seems that sending a short SMS or using the phone to call someone is absolute and looks like Facebook, Myspace and others are just not enough !!!!! LOOOOL

I don't like Twitter. Unless you have ADHD, you wouldn't need to obnoxiously let others know what you're doing.

Let penny-arcade explain

http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2008/4/23/

Twitter seems stupid to me as well, interestingly enough, I read an article in a magazine about the creator of Twitter today at work. Even he admits it's almost useless, but could become useful at some point in the future.

One example was a firefighting station that sent a tweet out to all of it's firefighters at the same time during emergencys.

I don't know, I think it's stupid in a general sense though, even seeing that it does have some legitimate use. I will (probably) never subscribe to someone's twitter account, because I really don't care. I don't have enough time to myself, let alone enough to devote to reading about what someone else is doing.

This too will pass.

Maybe 13 year olds might find this fun but I'm too old and have seen too mayny fads in my life to see either the use, point or fascination of something like this. Boring people reporting on boring irrelevent little details of their lives - seriously who cares

all these sites are just for people who like to brag. i have face book but just have it for something to do when i'm bored. its just good for 2 seconds out of the day

I agree with many of the above posters...Twitter is completely stupid. I don't know anyone that uses it either. It's like a Facebook status update and nothing else...how pointless!

Twitter is the most worthless website I have been to in a while. For the life of me I can't figure out why or how it is becoming popular. Check out facebook and delete all the features except for status updates and you have twitter. Facebook itself is a stupid social networking site but at least it has some value to students. I see no value at all in Twitter.

just got from its homepage and watched a short twitter video, i can say the service is not far from what facebook gives its users.
i also heard a similar feature which is called a Plurk, its plurk.com,i think.

these won't go mainstream but will find its users.

Don't know what is Twitter all about. Heard a lot about it, but no one actually explained what it is for. I manage to do all my things without it, so probably, it's not that important.

I really dont know what twitter is, but why did he say "twitter is poor mans email", isn't gmail also free so that even homeless people can have one? Twitter,hotmail,yahoo,and gmail are all poor mans email deuschbag!

I agree. Hubris. Personally I'd be proud NOT to have created twitter. Who wants to be the guy responsible for the Macarena of the internet?
Ahh freshman year of college, watching a bunch of idiots standing in line in the courtyard dancing like idiotic puppets. Aren't trends fun?

It's probably like the comment section you see at the bottom of many articles. Useless, but sometimes funny?

I think by saying 'Poor man's email' he isn't talking about the cost, but merely a stripped down version of a better product.

I'm surprised so many people seem to have missed the connection.

I also agree that Twitter is all but useless.

I think what he is getting at is in the world of mobile mass communication twitter is the poor man’s email. Iphones windows mobile blackberry’s with exchange or imap are not cheap you know.

Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, and the like are havens for narcissists. They are the AOL of the new millenium, and will phase out eventually, perhaps leaving behind a few scraps of useful technology; much like AOL's instant messenger, which is pretty much all that's left of the former behemoth.

Well, back in the 19th century people were with other people a lot. Families lived closer, people had more siblings, hobbies were usually outdoors. Technology and modern living served to physically isolate people, but the emotional desire to communicate (when the need strikes) remains. The internet allows a "have your cake and eat it too" mentality, because you can casually talk about things that might not rate a dedicated phone call, and it's more low key to send a 1 line email, an IM, or a text, and no ones expecting an instant reply in most cases. We're getting back what we lost.

The problem is, in the modern iteration, the murmurings don't go to your brother sitting next to you, they go to millions of viewers (in the case of the congressional 'tweets) and are there for later review.

People are just realizing the "mental diarrhea" that comes out of most people daily is really not that interesting or slick. It's not like a well-considered and thought out paper or work with a real point, it's just raw unfiltered and uninteresting humanity.

It's sad that politicians are lowering the public discourse because they are convinced they lost an election because they didn't use enough gimmicks. They lost because the playing the religion/abortion/homosexuality/Reagan fiscal policy cards won't work on the modern generation who either don't care about those issues or just took the time to observe the the conservative movement became a puppet for big industry and abandoned their central tenets. I want to see a Real Ron Paul Republican party rise from the ashes, but until then there is only one choice for most folks. By posting inane details of their day, during events they SHOULD be paying attention to, politicians remind us why we need to get these baby boomers out of office.

In the modern world, we can look up your voting record, we can pull up your campaign promises, we can fact check your claims. So now, maybe start representing us and providing real substance instead of playing games. Twitter is a tool with a specific use case, apply it when it's relevant, just like other tools of the modern age, and do your job.

Used Twitter once and got quickly bored of it as it's the online version of today's texting addiction. I mean having kids text each other even when sitting next to each other rather than talking is a sign of inability of social interaction. I mean, the kid that had 13,000 sms per month and then the one that had like 40,000 in a month ... obviously not healthy. Twitter is just moving the concept to the internet and extends the "friends" circle. I fail to see its value, but for those addicted to sms it's certainly a way to communicate with "the world". I wonder when the first job interviews are attempted to be texted. ;-)

Yes, most of us ney-sayers are probably just getting old, but there is some truth in loosing social skills when relying to much on virtual worlds. (Not to mention Spelling or Grammar.)