企业级通讯工具兼谈近况

The Slack generation 利用好闲置时间的时代到来啦 How workplace messaging could replace other missives 主播：凤梨君 个人微信号：fenglisama 微信公众号：EnglishQiPa May 14th 2016 | SAN FRANCISCO | From the print edition STEWART BUTTERFIELD, the boss of Slack, a messaging company, has been wonderfully unlucky in certain ventures. In 2002 he and a band of colleagues created an online-video game called “Game Neverending”. It never took off, but the tools they used to design it turned into Flickr, the web’s first popular photo-sharing website. Yahoo bought it in 2005 for a reported $35m. 1 slack |slæk| （组织中人员、资金或地方的）富余部分，闲置部分 2 missive |ˈmɪsɪv| 信函；（尤指）长信，公函 3 venture|ˈventʃə(r)| （尤指有风险的）企业，商业，投机活动，经营项目 4 Flickr 图片分享网站 Four years later Mr Butterfield tried to create another online game, called Glitch. It flopped as well. But Mr Butterfield and his team developed an internal messaging system to collaborate on it, which became the basis for Slack. In Silicon Valley, such a change in strategy is called a “pivot”; anywhere else it is called good fortune. Today Slack is one of the fastest-rising startups around, with $540m in funding and a valuation of around $3.8 billion.“I guess the lesson should be, pursue your dream and hope it fails, so you can do something else,” says Cal Henderson, Slack’s chief technology officer. 1 flop |flɒp; 美 flɑ:p| 砸锅；完全失败 2 pivot |ˈpɪvət| 支点；枢轴；中心点 3 glitch |glɪtʃ| 小故障；小毛病；小差错 It is rare for business software to arouse emotion besides annoyance. But some positively gush about how Slack has simplified office communication. Instead of individual e-mails arriving in a central inbox and requiring attention, Slack structures textual conversations within threads (called “channels”) where groups within firms can update each other in real time. It is casual and reflects how people actually communicate, eschewing e-mail’s outdated formalities, says Chris Becherer of Pandora, an online-music firm that uses Slack. 1 gush |gʌʃ| 迸发，爆发，发作 2 central |ˈsentrəl| 最重要的；首要的；主要的 3 textual|ˈtekstʃuəl| 文本的；篇章的 4 eschew |ɪsˈtʃu:| （有意地）避开，回避，避免 5 formality |fɔ:ˈmæləti; 美 fɔ:rˈm-| 例行公事;正式手续