誰說即時通訊圍攻下電郵通訊活不長了
David Carr, media columnist for The New York Times, today wrote a column titled “For Email Newsletters, A Death Greatly Exaggerated.”
《紐約時報》（ The New York Times）媒體專欄作家大衛o卡爾日前撰文《電郵通訊已死的說法純屬誇大其詞》。My first reaction was, “Thank goodness, since I’m paid to write an email newsletter.” My second reaction was, “Wait. Huh?”
我看到這篇文章的第一反應是：“謝天謝地，我可是靠寫電郵通訊賺錢呢。”我的第二反應則是：“等等。真的嗎？”For the past twelve years, I’ve written a morning email newsletter focused on the venture capital and private equity industries. It began with a few dozen readers and now has over 50,000 (being completely rebuilt from scratch a few years back, after I changed employers). For most of those years it has been profitable, in that my salary is its only substantial expense. If email newsletters were on the precipice of the Great Beyond, no one bothered to tell me, my readers or my advertisers.
過去十二年，我一直在寫一份專門報道風險投資和私募股權行業的早間電郵通訊。起初只有幾十位讀者，如今讀者數已經超過50,000人（幾年前我換了僱主之後完全從頭做起的）。這麼些年來，大部分時間都是盈利的，因爲我的工資是它唯一一項大的支出。如果說電郵通訊快掛了，那怎麼沒人告訴我、我的讀者還有我的廣告客戶？
Look, I get Carr’s point. Email isn’t as sexy as snaps, as trendy as tweets or as pretty as pins. In theory, it should have gone the way of Palm Pilots. But the reality is that email newsletters not only have persevered, but never were actually under threat. The fact that so many new ones are launching now only reflects widespread recognition of a model that has worked for more than a decade, rather than some sort of unexpected reclamation project.
我明白卡爾的意思。電子郵件沒有快照性感，不如Twitter消息時髦，也沒有“釘圖片”漂亮。理論上，它應該已經同Palm Pilots個人掌上電腦一樣退出歷史舞臺。但事實上，電郵通訊不但沒有消亡，而且從來沒有真正受到威脅。現在有這麼多新的電郵通訊產品推出，恰恰表明這種十多年來行之有效的模式受到了廣泛認可，而並不是什麼出人意料之外的回潮。Today’s email newsletters provide the same value propositions as they did at the outset: Direct opt-in delivery into an essential communication channel, without artificial layout or length restrictions determined by a third party. It is a responsive technology, where producers can enable interaction with consumers — minus the trolling risks of a website comment section. Content can be curation, long-form prose or anything in between. Email also can provide exclusivity to a much greater extent than can social media channels. Finally, email newsletter analytics are, in many cases, as good as you can get anywhere else on the web.
如今的電郵通訊在價值主張方面並沒有改變初衷：讀者直接選擇加入，內容被髮送到一個重要的溝通渠道，沒有人爲的版式設計，也不受第三方確定的長度限制。這是一種迅速積極反應的技術，生產者可與消費者進行互動——同時又避免了網站評論區被人故意發佈煽動性信息的風險。它的內容可以是短新聞、長篇散文或介於兩者之間的其它形式。與社交媒體渠道相比，電子郵件的排他性大得多。最後，在很多情況下，電郵通訊分析的質量不遜色於其它任何線上平臺。Moreover, when exactly is it that email itself is supposed to have died? Remember that Groupon, a $4.5 billion company, was founded in late 2008 using email as its exclusive media. Or two years ago, when Google announced that there were 425 million active Gmail accounts (or, put another way, more than 6% of the world population). Obviously not today, when email newsletters as “on the march” (as Carr writes).
此外，電子郵件本身何曾消亡？2008年末，如今市值45億美元的團購網站Groupon創建之時，可是將電子郵件作爲它唯一的媒介。而兩年前，谷歌（Google）宣佈它旗下的電子郵件服務Gmail有4.25億（相當於全世界人口的6％以上）活躍賬戶。如今，電郵更不可能消亡，因爲電郵通訊正在“發展壯大”（卡爾文中如是寫道）呢。Indeed, the death of email newsletters has been greatly exaggerated. In that there was no decline in the first place.
確實，電郵通訊已死的說法純屬誇張。因爲電郵通訊根本就還沒有走上下坡路。
