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Facebook有望成为互联网的未来

分享: [双语阅读]

短短几年前,Facebook的f8还默默无闻,只是合法黑客这个小圈子里的聚会,如今却已经成为互联网当仁不让的朝圣地,有志参与构建互联网未来基础设施的人现在蜂拥而至。

    马克•扎克伯格于上周四在Facebook年度开发者大会f8上登台亮相,引起数千名狂热信徒的欢呼和尖叫。他们绝大多数都是笔记本不离手的小伙子(当然也有少数姑娘);同时,收看视频直播的观众数则超过10万人。短短几年前,f8还默默无闻,只是部分合法黑客圈子里的小聚会,不过它如今已经成为互联网的朝圣地,吸引着一切有志参与构建互联网未来基础设施的人。

    这几年发生了什么变化?上届f8于一年半前召开,当时,“喜欢”(like)按钮首次亮相。如今,Facebook用户数猛增了40%,达到7.5亿人。市场调研机构eMarketer预计Facebook的收益将增长1倍,达到42.7亿美元。扎克伯格俨然已经成为了这个时代的罗伯特•摩斯(美国著名建筑师——译注)。他构建的不仅仅是互联网的操作系统,互联网的组织方式,更是互联网本身。

    不出所料,扎克伯格在会上揭晓了一系列令人眼花缭乱的功能,包括:全新改版的个人档案,它现在被称为时间线(Timeline);将应用程序嵌入Facebook用户体验的全新途径;以及加强版的“社交图景”(social graph)功能,也就是网络版的个人关系图,用户可以借此绘出自己与其他人关系的示意图。至于最重要的,恐怕要数社交图景能让Spotify等音乐服务以及Netflix这类流媒体网站更加紧密地将其业务嵌入到Facebook中。

    扎克伯格称:“想像一下我们表达个人生活的方式。如果最初的Facebook只是(一段对话)的开头5分钟,那么我今天所展的则是这段对话余下的部分,也就是长达几个小时的深入、精彩的交流;而下一步的流媒体功能(stream)则可以将呈现的对话时长延长到15小时。”实际上,Facebook有望成为我们的数字生活剪贴板,而有朝一日,它能最终成为我们的生活博物馆。

    扎克伯格面对的是一大帮群情激昂的开发者,后者将f8念作“fate”(意为“命运”),这可不是在开玩笑。如果扎克伯格的发言让人觉得信心满满,甚至过于张狂,以至于近乎狂妄,我们不妨看看他一贯的两步走战略:第一步,Facebook发布重大改版和新功能。随后,用户大呼Facebook违规,通常是抱怨隐私受到侵犯。Facebook最终撤销计划、做出调整,然后我们也就消停了。但无论如何,Facebook还是会不动声色地调整、推出新功能。

    早在上周初,就有一些人对新闻订阅服务(newsfeed)的改版表示不满,不过他们应该铭记2006年的教训。当时,初出茅庐的首席执行官扎克伯格首次推出了新闻订阅服务。Facebook上一个名叫“反Facebook新闻订阅学生同盟”的群组招揽了多达74万名会员;此外,还有一家网站呼吁用户抵制Facebook,停用该社交网络一天。当时,扎克伯格被迫发出了平生第一封道歉信并承诺调整隐私策略。但他并未放弃这项核心业务,它最终成为社交网络的基石。现在,恐怕这项服务已经是行业标准了。至少到目前为止,扎克伯格强迫我们使用分享工具的意图已经奏效。

    Mark Zuckerberg took the stage today at f8, Facebook's sort-of-annual developers' conference, to the screaming affirmation of thousands of laptop-toting fanboys (and also a few women) and a live-streaming audience that surpassed 100,000. What began a few years back as a fringe festival for legit hackers has become ground zero for anyone interested in helping build the infrastructure of tomorrow's Internet.

    What's changed? A year and a half after the last f8, where the "like" button debuted, Facebook has increased its users 40% to 750 million and eMarketer estimates it will double revenues to an estimated $4.27 billion. Zuckerberg has become the Robert Moses of his generation, building out not just an operating system for the web or a way to organize it -- but the web itself.

    As expected, Zuckerberg unleashed a dizzying number of announcements: He introduced a redesigned profile called Timeline; a new way to bring applications into the Facebook experience; and, an evolved version of the "social graph" -- the web of personal relationships that users map out by connecting to each other. Perhaps most significant, the social graph lets businesses like music service Spotify or streaming site Netflix (NFLX) more deeply integrate their services into Facebook.

    "Imagine expressing the story of your life," Zuckerberg explained. "If the original Facebook was the first five minutes [of a conversation] and the stream was the next 15, what I want to show you today is the rest--the next few hours of a deep engaging conversation." Expect Facebook, in effect, to become our living digital scrapbook and even, eventually, perhaps our fossil.

    Zuckerberg spoke to an overflowing mass of entranced developers who aren't kidding when they pronounce "f8" as "fate." If his announcements seemed confident and disruptive enough to border on arrogance, consider that we've seen this two-steps-forward routine before: First, Facebook releases numerous significant redesigns and new features. Then, users cry foul, often voicing concerns over privacy. The company, finally, pulls back on its plan and makes tweaks while we all settle down and adjust, building out the new features quietly anyhow.

    Anyone complaining about the redesign of the newsfeed earlier this week would do well to remember 2006 when a more youthful CEO rolled it out in the first place. A Facebook group called "Students Against Facebook Newsfeed" attracted 740,000 members and a website called for a daylong boycott of the site, causing Zuckerberg to issue his first letter of apology and alter privacy settings. But he didn't back down on the core feature and it became the backbone for the social web. Now, the newsfeed might as well be an institution. And so far, Zuckerberg's mad impulse to force feed us sharing tools has worked.


    眼下,Facebook已经占据了社交网络领域的支配地位,业界似乎鲜有竞争对手。今年6月,谷歌(Google)推出了新的社交产品——Google +。谷歌对其大肆吹捧,而该产品上市伊始就凝聚了数以百万计注册用户。不过三个月过去了,现在我们并不清楚到底有多少人还在坚持使用Google +。(谷歌最近向普通网民开放了Google +,希望能招揽到更多新用户。)Twitter虽然发展迅猛,但其业务过于局限而且还面临着重大高层变动。至于MySpace,事实上已经完蛋了。

    更为重要的是,分享正在成为主宰互联网的信息发现、传递和增长的模式,而且在某种程度上,正在取代那些不愿意与Facebook整合的搜索及内容网站,因为Facebook正在大步挺进之前一度遭到忽视的领域。而在初期就欣然接纳了Facebook的企业则获得了竞争优势;少数曾与Facebook并肩作战的幸运者现在更是获得了巨大发展。Spotify的首席执行官丹尼尔•埃克登台亮相,与扎克伯格一道向大家展示Spotify全新的音乐服务超级应用。会场上的大屏幕上显示着:“更多音乐,更多选择,付费意愿(是普通用户的)两倍。”

    随着互联网日益超越计算机的范畴,如今的Facebook已经到了无所不在的程度,它已经成为了我们生活中的一个重要平台。AKQA是一家大型数字广告代理公司,拥有奥迪(Audi)、耐克(Nike)等重量级客户。其首席执行官汤姆•贝德凯尔正在思考Facebook的未来发展,也许Facebook能搬上电视屏幕,也许还能进入我们的汽车(当然是声控版的Facebook)。贝德凯尔说:“对于大型广告机构而言,Facebook正在成为互联网的代名词。”

    然而,这代表Facebook一定就是互联网的未来。Facebook这次的改版太显著了,足以激起用户的强烈反应。他们也许会觉得曝光过度,或是直接被如此多的变化弄得不知所措。(近来Facebook对界面做了大量改动,网站外观已经发生了显著变化。)而且,Facebook的潜在竞争对手并不仅仅局限于大型社交网站范畴,任何快速发展的互联网公司都可能成为威胁。而且,前提还是美国政府未来不会出于隐私保护或是反垄断方面的考虑出面干涉。

    也许这就是为什么尽管信徒数量一直在增加,扎克伯格却努力变得谦虚谨慎一点。今年的大会,他邀请了《周六夜现场》(Saturday Night Live)的明星安迪•萨姆博格来调侃自己。萨姆博格笑问:“Facebook究竟有多少用户?应该要比自称发明了Facebook的人多吧。”扎克伯格显然在自我解嘲。那一刻,大家都由衷地笑了。

    译者:项航

    At the moment, it would seem there's not much competition over who gets to control (and make money from) all of this sharing and connecting. In June, Google (GOOG) launched its new social product, Google+, to great fanfare and attracted tens of millions of sign-ups right away, but three months after launch it's not clear people are actually using it. (The company just recently opened Google+ to the wider public, hoping for a surge of new users.) Twitter is growing fast, but its scope is more limited and it has had considerable organizational challenges. MySpace is, well, dead.

    What's more, as sharing becomes the dominant paradigm for how information is discovered and passed on, augmenting and in some cases replacing traditional search, web sites that choose not to integrate with Facebook increasingly occupy overlooked corners of a shadow web. Those that embrace these tools early can gain competitive advantage; the lucky few that develop alongside the company as launch partners receive huge boosts. Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, took the stage alongside Zuckerberg to show off the music service's new super ap. The bullet points above his head read, "More music, more variety, twice as likely to pay."

    As the web expands beyond our computers, this puts Facebook everywhere -- as the dominant interface to our lives. As CEO of large digital ad agency AKQA with clients like Audi and Nike (NKE), Tom Bedecarre is thinking about a future in which Facebook is available on our TV sets and in our cars (voice-activated, of course). Says Bedecarrre, "For large marketers, Facebook is becoming the web."

    But it's not a given that the web belongs to Facebook. These new changes are significant enough that they are sure to inspire intense reactions from users who may feel overexposed or simply overwhelmed by so much change. (Recent incremental changes to the site's interface have already significantly changed the way the site looks.) The potential for competition isn't limited to large social properties -- any fast growing web property poses a threat. And that's if Washington doesn't step in at some point over privacy or concerns about competitiveness.

    Maybe that's why, as Zuckerberg's audience grows, he makes more of an attempt at humility. He began this year's event by inviting Saturday Night Live Star Andy Samberg up to make fun of him. "How many users does Facebook have?" Samberg joked. "Even more people than claim they invented Facebook." It was self-deprecating. It was funny. For a moment.

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