Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. That's what my college used in the late 90's/early 2000's, even though web mail had been available for a while, and I know Harvard did too. The lost functionality was mostly finger. Some people still used talk as well, although AIM/ICQ had mostly taken over that space.
Kids used to spend hours updating their .plan and .project files, finger'ing other people, etc. the same way they now spend hours messing around with Facebook and Twitter. That was lost with the move to web mail, and then social networks stepped in to fill the void.
The differences are mainly that a) the newer tools allow for richer media, not just text b) status updates are viewable in a timeline rather than being destructive overwrites, but c) they still aren't as well integrated imho as unix email/finger/talk.
Kids used to spend hours updating their .plan and .project files, finger'ing other people, etc. the same way they now spend hours messing around with Facebook and Twitter. That was lost with the move to web mail, and then social networks stepped in to fill the void.
The differences are mainly that a) the newer tools allow for richer media, not just text b) status updates are viewable in a timeline rather than being destructive overwrites, but c) they still aren't as well integrated imho as unix email/finger/talk.