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Say That Again

by Mike Masnick

Tue, Nov 14th 2000 3:23pm





Questionable Claims

from the outright-lying dept

Unfortunately, I have no link for this one, but I just caught TellMe's CEO, Mike McCue, on the Charlie Rose show on PBS. Now, I've not disguised the fact that I really don't think TellMe is a big deal, but I was amazed to hear McCue talk about it. He continually mentioned that he was "changing the world" because people could now get the internet on their phone. When pressed for examples, the best he could come up with is that people can order airline tickets on their phone now (as if we couldn't before). Then came the whopper. When asked exactly how that was "changing the world" McCue announced that only 10% of Americans had access to the internet, and he was making sure that the power of the internet wasn't just in the hands of "the elite few". I have to wonder if (1) he actually believes that number (and if so what that means about his connection with reality) and (2) if he doesn't - why he thinks people listening to him would ever believe that. It took me all of about 10 minutes to find stats that tell a very different story. Here's another one that clearly states nearly two-thirds of Americans accessed the internet in the past year (and that's nearly 6 months old).

3 Comments | Leave a Comment..


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  1.  

    Elite few

    identicon
    Ryan, Nov 14th, 2000 @ 3:50pm

    Also (and in saying this, I assume he was referring to cellular phones), wouldn't the 'elite few' be more likely to have cell phones? With the way ISPs are fighting for customers, you can get dialup for (in some cases) nothing, compared to the monthly cost of a cell phone. Of course, you do have to have a computer, but still... If you feel this is uniformed, feel free to correct me. I just think that people who 'haven't accessed the internet' (that's my quote, not his) are as likely, or even more so, to have a computer as to have a digital cell phone.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  2.  

    Re: Elite few

    icon
    Mike (profile), Nov 14th, 2000 @ 7:59pm

    This actually brings up a very good point. Whenever I talk about TellMe, I pretty much only think about using it on a mobile phone... However, when he's talking about it, I think he actually does mean any phone.

    Of course, that brings up another issue which is that while I can see the occasional reason why you might want to use this with a mobile phone, I don't see all that many times when anyone would ever need this on their regular phone.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]

  3.  

    Tell Me

    identicon
    Clouser, Nov 15th, 2000 @ 1:10am

    Good work here. Dug up the facts and got to the bottom line real fast.

    [ reply to this | link to this | view in thread ]


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