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Would you want to be able to book a taxi from your email program? How about being able to send emails from your music organiser? Or maybe you’d like to be able to order a pizza while using your dating app?

你想要能够通过电子邮件预约一辆出租车吗？或是想要能从你的音乐管理软件时发邮件吗？抑或你可能想要在使用交友软件时能点一份披萨？

Unlikely scenarios, all three; and yet many of the apps that we use would like to be able to encompass functionalities as diverse as that. It was part of the integrated approach that Microsoft’s Windows Phone introduced in 2010 with its “People Hub” idea. That didn’t have much success, arguably because it was too early and the implementation wasn’t great. But the idea that when you communicate, you want to be able do all sorts of communication – whether via Facebook or Twitter or text or email – is one that is catching on in a big way.

上述三种场景都是不太可能的；然而，我们使用的很多应用软件都想要涵盖尽可能多样化的功能。这是微软Windows手机在2010年与其“人脉中心”构想一同提出的综合战略的一部分。但是，那没有获得多大成功，可能是因为这一想法提出太早，而且实施过程也并非一帆风顺。但是这一理念，即在聊天的时候，你还想做其他各种各样的事，不论是通过脸书（Facebook）、推特（Twitter）、短信还是邮件，正如火如荼地流行起来。

As a result, some apps are beginning to suffer from a sort of late-teenage bloat. Apple’s iTunes on the desktop is the poster child for this. Having started as software to rip CDs and play MP3s, it has added functionality so that now it enables you to (deep breath) buy or stream a huge catalogue of songs, albums, podcasts, TV shows and films, and also to buy and download mobile apps – though the need to do the latter barely arises, since you can just add them to your device.

因此，很多应用软件开始经历一种“后青春膨胀”。台式机上安装的苹果公司的iTunes正是典型代表。一开始，此软件主要是为了淘汰CD，用来播放MP3，后来又加入了新功能，现在它可以使用户（深呼一口气）购买或在线收听大量的音乐、专辑、播客、电视节目和电影，还能购买或下载移动应用程序——虽然后者出现的频率较小，因为用户只能将这些程序安装在自己的设备上。

But iTunes wasn’t the first. Email programs have long been able to display photos, videos and documents; Microsoft did it first and most thoroughly in Outlook. In the same way Slack, the app that many look on as email’s better replacement (because it obviates the blizzard of separate emails in favour of chat spaces and links), has expanded to include the ability to show all sorts of content natively. Others are getting into the multifunction app. Facebook and Twitter have done it for a while: they’re not just text platforms but also photos and videos. Facebook is taking it further by having Facebook Messenger, and including in that Facebook M, its “assistant” to help you with various tasks.

但是iTunes并不是先例。电子邮件程序一直可以播放图片、视频和文件；微软是最开始在其Outlook（微软 提供的免费个人电子邮件服务）应用中做到的，而且做得最彻底。同样地，办公交流应用Slack被很多人视为是电子邮件更好的替代品（因为它去除了无数单独的邮件，而是倾向于聊天空间和联系）。此应用不断拓展其功能，包括展示各种各样的当地内容。其他人也开始涉足多功能应用软件领域。脸书和推特在这方面已发展了些时日了：它们不仅是文字平台，也是图片和视频平台。脸书正进一步拓展，创办了Facebook Messenger，还包

括Facebook M，这是脸书推出的用来帮助用户解决各种问题的助手。

Every app, after all, wants to be the one where you spend all your time. But on mobile, the risks associated with overloading the user interface (user confusion and complexity of updates) mean that established products tend to splinter instead.

毕竟，每个手机应用都想成为用户消磨时间的唯一途径。但是在手机端，使用户界面应接不暇（用户困惑和更新的复杂性）的危险意味着建立起来的产品反而会分崩离析。

Facebook has added news, video, audio and messaging; more recently it took the brave decision on mobile to split Messenger (for person-to-person contact) off as a separate app. Similarly on iOS, Apple has parcelled out the functions of the desktop iTunes to five apps – Music, Podcasts, Films, iTunes Store and App Store.

Facebook增加了新闻、视频、音频和信息服务；最近，它还做出大胆决定，在手机端将Messenger（用于人际交流）分离开来，成为一个独立的应用。类似地，在iOS系统上，苹果也将台式机上的iTunes的功能分成五个应用——音乐、播客、电影、iTunes Store和App Store。

Yet not all take that approach. WeChat, a Chinese messaging app, dwarfs most western products both in scale – it has around 700 million active accounts – and ambition: despite being first released only in January 2011 as a text/voice/photo-sharing app, it has expanded to provide functionality so that you can order cabs, buy film tickets, play games, check in for flights, pay bills … the list goes on and on. Connie Chan of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz wrote an astonished blogpost about its capability, noting that “while Facebook and WhatsApp measure growth by the number of daily users on their networks, WeChat cares more about how relevant and central [it] is in addressing the daily, even hourly, needs of its users”.

然而，不是所有产品都采用了此战略。微信无论在规模上——拥有7亿活跃用户，还是在野心上都使西方的大多数产品相形见绌。虽然微信在2011年1月首次推出时，仅仅是一个文字、音频和图片分享应用，但自那以来，它不断开发功能，现在用户可以在微信上订车，买电影票，玩游戏，核实航班，缴费等等。风险投资公司Andreessen Horowitz的陈梅陵（Connie Chan ）就微信的功能写了一篇令人震惊的博客，她写道“Facebook和WhatsApp通过每天他们网络上的用户数量来衡量其增长，而微信更关心的是它在解决用户每天，甚至是每小时的需求方面占据着多么重要的位置。

So why don’t we have a WeChat in the west? Facebook comes closest, but as noted above, it’s splitting apart on mobile. Possibly it’s because we tore apps apart on the desktop; Outlook’s ability to show documents was exploited by scripting viruses such as ILOVEYOU, so historically there’s caution around having too much capability inside an app. China, WeChat’s home ground, never went through the same desktop evolution – it jumped direct to mobile, where apps are more rigorously “sandboxed” in their interaction with other phone functions. We tend to praise apps that “do one thing well” – and then grumble because they can’t do some specific thing that we alone want to do.

那么，我们为什么不在西方也创办一个“微信”呢？Facebook是最为相似的一个，但是正如上文所述，其正在手机端分割业务。可能是因为我们在台式机上把各个应用都分开了；Outlook用于展示文件的能力被一些诸如ILOVEYOU脚本病毒所利用，所以，长时间以来，人们就提防在一个应用中使用太多功能。微信的发源地中国从未经历过相同的台式机演化，而是直接跃入手机端，手机上的各应用会更严密地聚合在一起，并与手机的其他功能一起发挥作用。我们总是赞赏那些“专攻某项功能”的应用软件，然后又不断抱怨，因为它们不能做一些我们想要独立做到的具体的事情。

This desire to be everything to everyone marks WeChat out – but it’s obvious that Facebook and WhatsApp want to do the same; in India, WhatsApp already serves some commercial functions as a link between businesses. Global ambition may mean globally large app functionality, rather than siloed mobile apps with single functions like Uber. In a few years, individual apps may have been swallowed into bigger ones. Need a cab? In the future it might be as easy as opening your camera app; Uber is already part of Messenger in some US cities.

这种想要成为每个人的万能应用的想法令微信脱颖而出，但是显而易见的是，Facebook和WhatsApp也想要如此。在印度，WhatsApp已具备了商务功能，可以作为企业之间的一个联系纽带。全球化抱负意味着全球化的大型应用功能，而不是只有单一功能的移动应用，如优步（Uber）。在几年内，个体应用可能会被较大的应用吞并。需要出租车？未来这可能像打开相机应用软件一样简单；优步在美国的一些城市已是Messenger的一部分了。 

译者：颜世玉， 爱新闻iNews 2015年冬季实习营成员

审校&编辑：齐磊

英文来源：卫报