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電子郵件作為通信之王經(jīng)歷了飛速發(fā)展。不過它的統(tǒng)治時(shí)代已經(jīng)終結(jié)。

新一代服務(wù)開始取而代之，比如Twitter、Facebook和其他無數(shù)爭(zhēng)著想在新世界中分一杯羹的服務(wù)。如同10多年前電子郵件的出現(xiàn)一樣，這一轉(zhuǎn)變有望深刻地改寫人們通信的方式──以我們剛剛能夠開始想像得到的方式。

當(dāng)然，我們?nèi)詴?huì)使用電子郵件。不過電子郵件更適合以往人們使用互聯(lián)網(wǎng)的方式──隔三差五地登錄、登出、查看信息。如今，我們總是聯(lián)著網(wǎng)，無論我們是坐在桌子前還是用手機(jī)。這種總是聯(lián)網(wǎng)的狀態(tài)產(chǎn)生了一系列新的通信方式，比電子郵件要快的多，也有趣的多。

如果你可以通過及時(shí)消息更快地得到答案，為什么還要等待電子郵件回復(fù)呢？由于Facebook的出現(xiàn)，有些問題不必問就已經(jīng)知道答案了。如果一位朋友更新了Facebook上的公開狀態(tài)，告訴全世界她已經(jīng)下班了，你就無需再問她了。與目前處于測(cè)試階段的谷歌Wave等服務(wù)相比，拖著“附件”的電子郵件看起來要枯燥得多。通過谷歌Wave，用戶可以把照片從桌面拖放到Wave中，與別人分享照片，并輸入評(píng)論。

難怪在電子郵件繼續(xù)增長之際，其他類型的通信服務(wù)卻在以更高的速度增長。據(jù)尼爾森(Nielsen Co.)的數(shù)據(jù)，2009年8月，美國、歐洲的幾個(gè)國家、澳大利亞和巴西有2.769億電子郵件用戶，較2008年8月的2.292億增長了21%。而社交網(wǎng)站和其他社群網(wǎng)站的用戶數(shù)量飆升了31%，至3.015億。

Email has had a good run as king of communications. But its reign is over.

In its place, a new generation of services is starting to take hold -- services like Twitter and Facebook and countless others vying for a piece of the new world. And just as email did more than a decade ago, this shift promises to profoundly rewrite the way we communicate -- in ways we can only begin to imagine.

We all still use email, of course. But email was better suited to the way we used to use the Internet -- logging off and on, checking our messages in bursts. Now, we are always connected, whether we are sitting at a desk or on a mobile phone. The always-on connection, in turn, has created a host of new ways to communicate that are much faster than email, and more fun.

Why wait for a response to an email when you get a quicker answer over instant messaging? Thanks to Facebook, some questions can be answered without asking them. You don't need to ask a friend whether she has left work, if she has updated her public 'status' on the site telling the world so. Email, stuck in the era of attachments, seems boring compared to services like Google Wave, currently in test phase, which allows users to share photos by dragging and dropping them from a desktop into a Wave, and to enter comments in near real time.

Little wonder that while email continues to grow, other types of communication services are growing far faster. In August 2009, 276.9 million people used email across the U.S., several European countries, Australia and Brazil, according to Nielsen Co., up 21% from 229.2 million in August 2008. But the number of users on social-networking and other community sites jumped 31% to 301.5 million people.

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