Facebook严阵以待

    直到最近，Google+上最受欢迎的人还是马克•扎克伯格，他已经拥有598,000名粉丝，而且数字还在增长。但到目前为止，他并未发布任何公共信息，而且他根本就不希望讨论Google+。在7月份的一次活动上，当被追问关于Google+的看法时，他认为“Google+只是进一步验证了未来5年网络的发展趋势”。（言下之意似乎是：他们只是在抄袭我们而已。)

    但在今年夏季的封闭研发期间，位于帕洛阿尔托市的Facebook总部内气氛紧张。超过750名工程师加班加点，他们忙碌的身影经常在扎克伯格坐镇的小型玻璃会议室外往来穿梭；而近年来，这种情形在Facebook仅出现过一次。当时是2010年夏天，外界盛传谷歌正在开发“Facebook杀手”，于是扎克伯格要求工程师们加班加点工作60天，优化网站的关键社交功能，如照片、群组和活动等。而与当时一样，今年夏天，Facebook的餐厅在晚上和周末对员工开放，员工的孩子可以到这里用餐，然后与父母道晚安——因为他们的父母还要工作到很晚。到今年9月份，Facebook发布了一系列新功能，例如可以与Google+的圈子功能媲美的群组工具。Facebook产品与研发团队的一位成员就表示：“【谷歌】可能会在社交项目上投入巨额资金和海量人力。所以，Facebook的所有人都感觉：情况非常严重，我们应该严肃对待。”

    这种焦虑情绪不仅仅表现在推动Facebook开发出更好的产品， Facebook甚至秘密聘请博雅公关公司（Burson-Marsteller）在报纸和博客上发表了一系列批评谷歌的文章，但这样拙劣的举措结果却适得其反，因为媒体很快就发现Facebook是博雅公关的客户。虽然Facebook声称此举是出于公司对谷歌违反隐私政策行为的担忧，但它却因为自己糟糕的判断力率先成为众矢之的。

    但具有讽刺意义的是，Facebook和谷歌一方面都希望尽可能为各自的广告商挖掘尽可能多的用户个人信息，但同时双方又一直在“保护用户隐私”方面苦苦挣扎。我们可能对Zappos网站上的一双鞋发表了评论，或是在状态栏里更新了未来婚礼计划的信息。而Facebook却能根据这些信息将我们引导至可能需要的商品广告上， 于是许多大公司纷纷将Facebook平台作为在网络上进行大规模品牌宣传活动的首选。因此，虽然Facebook目前的广告收入远比不上谷歌，但其增长速度却快得多。据美国市场研究公司eMarketer预计，今年Facebook的广告收入将飙升至43亿美元，较去年的20亿美元增长一倍多。而相比而言，分析师预测谷歌今年广告收入的增长幅度仅为30%，约为380亿美元。

    如何让更多用户在Facebook上消磨更多时间，与Facebook好友分享更多信息，进而积累更多数据？目前，扎克伯格正被这一问题所困扰。在今年9月举行的F8大会上，他发布了一项被称为“时间线”的功能，用来取代Facebook逐渐落伍的个人资料页面。扎克伯格对这一功能的解释是：“想象一下，这就像是你正在讲述自己的人生经历一样。”为了清楚地演示这一功能，他以自己的Facebook时间线为例作为说明。这是一个垂直的时间轴，追溯了他的人生经历，其中按顺序列出了他在网站上发布的所有帖子，通过这些帖子，他一生中所有最重要的时刻一目了然；同时，这一功能促使他发布了大量的帖子和照片来追溯人生，一直回溯到1984年5月14日。帖子写到：出生于多布斯费里，纽约。实际上，扎克伯格计划引导用户将Facebook变成个人生活的数字剪贴本。我们不妨设想一下，假如用户要补上个人在Facebook诞生之前数十年间的生活片段，他们将要花多少时间上传照片，整理活动记录。

Facebook

    Until recently, the most popular person on Google+, with 598,000 followers and counting, was Mark Zuckerberg. But he has yet to make a public post, and indeed he'd prefer not to discuss Google+ at all. When pressed at a July event, he called it only a "validation as to how the next five years are going to play out." (Translation: Uh, they're copying us.)

    However, inside the Palo Alto office where more than 750 engineers regularly pass by the small glass conference room in which Zuckerberg, 27, holds court, Facebook employees put in some serious overtime during the summer lockdown. This had happened only once before in recent years at Facebook: After word leaked that Google was starting work on a "Facebook killer" in summer 2010, Zuckerberg called on engineers to work nights and weekends for 60 days to revamp key social features like photos, groups, and events. Just as it did then, the cafeteria opened up on evenings and weekends this summer, and children dropped in for dinners and good-night hugs before their parents logged back on for late nights. By September, Facebook had released a slew of new features like better grouping tools to mirror those Google+ circles. Says one member of the product and engineering team: "[Google] can throw all the money in the world, including hundreds of people, at this. So people were, like, This is serious, and we should take it seriously."

    That anxiety wasn't simply channeled into building a better product. In May, Facebook secretly hired public relations firm Burson-Marsteller to plant anti-Google stories in papers and blogs, a ham-fisted move that backfired when journalists discovered Facebook was Burson's client. The company defended its concerns about Google's privacy violations but took the flak for bad judgment.

    The irony, of course, is that Facebook and Google both are in a constant struggle to respect users' privacy while mining as much personal information as possible for the companies' advertisers. All that social information we plug into Facebook when we "like" a pair of shoes on Zappos or update our status about future wedding plans helps the company serve us up ads for things we're more likely to want. This has made Facebook into the go-to advertising platform for big marketers hoping to do brand advertising at scale on the web. As a result, even though Facebook's revenue is minuscule compared with Google's, it is growing at a much faster rate. It is expected to surge to $4.3 billion this year, or more than double the $2 billion it had last year, according to eMarketer. In contrast, analysts predict that Google's revenue will grow just 30%, to $38 billion.

    Zuckerberg is obsessed with figuring out how to amass more data by getting more people to spend more time sharing more things with their Facebook friends. At the F8 event in September, he unveiled something called a timeline to replace Facebook's aging profile pages. "Imagine expressing the story of your life," Zuckerberg explained. To demonstrate, he popped up his own Facebook timeline, where a vertical line scrolled backward through his personal history, curating all the posts he'd ever made on the site to bring to the surface the most important items and encouraging him to add posts and photos going all the way back to the May 14, 1984, post: Born, Dobbs Ferry, New York. In effect, Zuckerberg plans to coax us into making Facebook our living digital scrapbooks. Imagine the hours users may log uploading photos and labeling events from the lost decades B.F. (Before Facebook).

    但Facebook在F8会议上最大胆的举措并不是上述功能更新，而是在社交层面进一步与Netflix和Spotify等其他服务进行整合。现在，如果用户希望注册Spotify，就必须提供他们的Facebook账户信息。而这一点对用户来说，有利的一面是可以在Spotify或Facebook上直接找到和收听朋友的播放列表，而不利的一面则是自己的音乐偏好将被公之于众（例如，肖恩•帕克正在收听Florence + the Machine乐队的音乐）。而随着时间的推移，这类新的数据可能蕴藏着巨大的商业价值。虽然现在许多网络出版商允许用户选择是否在Facebook上公开自己的动态，比如他们读过的文章，或他们购买的鞋子等，但多数用户都会跳过这一步。而在新的模式下，共享成为了一种选择性退出，而不是选择性进入。由此，Facebook可以突然之间获得大量的用户在线行为信息，并最终利用这些数据来出售更有针对性的线上和线下广告。 如果说谷歌AdWords和AdSense广告平台是目前帮助广告客户找到大量有采购目标的受众，那么社交广告的用途则是用来帮助人们发现新的事物。

战火硝烟四起

    10月末的一天，科技博客界因为社交网络领域的一则新闻而沸沸扬扬：扎克伯格不再是Google+上拥有粉丝最多的用户。是谁取代了他呢？这个人正是佩奇。虽然看起来这不足为奇，但不难想象谷歌总部肯定为此窃喜不已。无论是谷歌还是Facebook都不愿谈论双方之间的竞争（因此他们也不愿意CEO们就本文置评），但实际上，双方已经在很多方面展开较量，哪怕是一次小小的胜利都会让他们弹冠相庆。

    两家公司对人才的争夺或许是衡量两者竞争最直观的指标，双方工程师或者高管跳槽到对方的情况很容易统计。而这方面的竞争呈一边倒的趋势。Facebook内部从高管到底层实习生，来自谷歌的人比比皆是，其中就包括谷歌原社交项目研究员亚当斯。在Facebook的11位高管中，有4位来自谷歌，包括现任COO谢丽尔•桑德伯格以及负责广告和运营业务的大卫•菲舍尔。

    但这些数据只不过是双方竞争的缩影。早在2007年，双方的竞争便已拉开序幕，随后便愈演愈烈。Facebook有什么致命武器？它是硅谷最炙手可热的公司，同时在未来上市后可以创造大批百万富翁，这些是它吸引人才的王牌。而谷歌则投入巨额资金予以还击。一位曾亲身经历双方人才争夺战的高管表示，谷歌甚至许诺，如果顶尖的工程师或高管留守公司，他们将可获得超过价值1,000万美元的股票和现金。很快，这些消息不胫而走，许多谷歌员工理所当然会采取行动：他们先拿到Facebook 的入职通知，然后转过头来以此要求谷歌大幅加薪。近期从谷歌跳槽的一位高管说：“这种情况就造成了一种‘非谷歌式’的环境。人们开始‘良禽择木而栖’。”于是在今年1月，谷歌推出了不同的措施，给所有员工全部加薪10%，并且将大部分员工的奖金计入基础工资。由此，许多谷歌员工的薪金增加了15%，甚至20%。

    如果说在人才争夺战中，谷歌处于守势，在吸引用户眼球方面它则是攻势如潮，其最有力的武器是在互联网领域的主导地位。例如，经过90天的试运行后，今年9月份，Google+完全向用户开放，而谷歌为此采取的推广措施连一些大公司都艳羡不已：谷歌在其主页上放置了一个大大的蓝色箭头，将数千万用户引导至Google+图标，使Google+的流量迅猛上升。除主页外，谷歌还计划在Gmail、谷歌地图以及YouTube等服务的庞大用户群中不分昼夜地推广Google+，并将Google+服务整合到数百万台Android手机中。Twitter首席执行官迪克•科斯托罗也表示：“毋庸置疑，Google+肯定会吸引到大量用户。”

    Facebook最担心的自然便是谷歌吸引用户的能力。尽管Facebook的高管多年以来一直表示，他们有信心在公平竞争环境中击败谷歌，但他们也担心微软之前的一幕将会重演，即谷歌并不会与Facebook公平竞争，而是会利用其在互联网领域的主导地位来推广Google+。而且在谷歌网站上推广Google+不仅非常有效，而且也无可非议。但如果谷歌利用其搜索引擎来力推Google+并打压其他社交网站服务，则可能产生争议。虽然谷歌还未采取这种措施来推广Google+，但它之前在推广谷歌地图等其他服务时便曾这样做过，导致竞争对手大呼不平。如果谷歌今后希望采取这种措施，必须三思而行，因为公司已经在接受政府的反垄断调查。而在移动领域，谷歌可能在Android手机和平板电脑上内置多个Google+功能，进而增加对手的竞争难度。

    But the boldest move at F8 was not Zuckerberg's flashy redesign but rather deeper social integration with other services like Netflix (NFLX) and Spotify. To register for Spotify, newcomers must now use their Facebook credentials. The upside is that you can find and listen to your friends' playlists on Spotify or on Facebook directly. The downside is your musical tastes are revealed to the world (i.e., Sean Parker is listening to Florence + the Machine). This new stream of social data could prove invaluable over time. Until now, although many web publishers offered users the option to publish their actions -- articles they read, shoes they buy -- on Facebook, most people took a pass. In the new model, sharing becomes opt-out rather than opt-in, and Facebook could become the sudden recipient of a good deal more information about what we do online. Eventually, the company could use the data to sell even more targeted ads both on and off the site. If Google's AdWords and AdSense are the de facto tools for helping advertisers reach large numbers of people who know what they're looking for, social ads will be the tool for helping people discover new things.

The war

    One day in late October, tech blogs started buzzing about the latest bit of news on the social web: Zuckerberg had lost his place as the most followed Google+ user. Who edged him out? None other than Larry Page. Trivial, perhaps, but it's hard not to think that the news lit up smiles across the Googleplex. Neither Google nor Facebook likes to talk about competing with each other (and neither company would make their CEOs available for this story), but battles are raging on multiple fronts, and both sides celebrate even the smallest victory.

    Nowhere is keeping score easier than in the battle for talent, where every engineer or executive who defects from one company or the other is easily tabulated. On that front the battle has been a lopsided affair. Look through the ranks of Facebook, from upper management to lowly interns, and you'll bump into ex-Googlers like Adams, the social researcher, at every turn. Four of Facebook's 11 top executives hail from Google, including COO Sheryl Sandberg and David Fischer, the advertising and operations chief.

    These numbers, however, don't tell the full story of a battle that began as far back as 2007 and has only intensified since. Facebook's weapons of choice? Its cachet as the hottest Valley company -- and its potential to mint millionaires when it finally goes public. Google has fought back with money, lots of it. In some cases Google offered top engineers or execs more than $10 million in equity and cash if they stayed, said an executive directly involved in the talent wars. Word spread quickly, and many Googlers did what rational people would do: They got an offer from Facebook just so they could get a big raise at Google. "It created an un-Googley environment," says a senior manager who left Google recently. "They like to be merit-based." So in January, Google tried a different approach: It lavished a giant 10% raise on its entire workforce. It also shifted a large chunk of employee bonuses into base pay. As a result, many people saw their paychecks increase by 15% or even 20%.

    But if Google is playing defense on the talent war, it is clearly playing offense in the battle for eyeballs. Its most powerful weapon is its status as the dominant Internet company. In September, for example, when it opened up Google+ to everyone, following a 90-day trial period, it unleashed the kind of promotion that even the biggest brands would envy: A large blue arrow on its homepage pointed the tens of millions who visit it daily to a Google+ tab. Traffic on the site spiked immediately. In addition to Google.com, Google plans to promote Google+, day in and day out, to the hundreds of millions of people who use services like Gmail, Maps, and YouTube; and to weave it into millions of Android handsets. Says Dick Costolo, the chief executive of Twitter: "There is no doubt they are going to be able to pull in massive numbers of users."

    Naturally, it's Google's power to pull in those users that worries Facebook the most. For years executives there have said that they are confident they can beat Google on a level playing field. But they fear that, like Microsoft in an earlier era, Google will use its power to peddle Google+, and not always fairly. Some tactics, like promotions on Google.com, are effective and uncontroversial. Others, like Google's ability to use its search engine to promote Google+ ahead of other social services, could prove more problematic. Google has not yet done so with Google+, but it has done just that with other services, like its maps, prompting rivals to cry foul. Google may think twice before engaging in such tactics, as it is already under a government antitrust investigation. Yet with mobile as the next battleground, Google may also find ways to build many Google+ features right into Android phones and tablets, making it harder for rivals to compete.

    扎克伯格注意到了谷歌在移动领域的优势，因此转向谷歌在移动领域最大的竞争对手——苹果公司（Apple），开始加强双方的关系。据知情人士透露，Facebook与苹果已经进行了数轮磋商。或许是因为两家公司曾经的过节，目前双方尚未找到可行的合作方式。去年苹果曾试图将围绕iTunes建立的社交网站Ping与Facebook互联，但却被Facebook以所谓技术问题予以回绝。苹果公司很少会公开指责其他公司的行为，但此次史蒂夫•乔布斯甚至亲自召集媒体，表达了他的不满。此外，苹果在其最新版本的移动操作系统上选择了与Twitter合作，而不是Facebook，这也对双方的合作商谈产生不利影响。不过双方的磋商仍在继续，因为他们都清楚，结盟有助于对付共同的竞争对手谷歌。

    也许你会问：假如这是一场战争，那么谁将是最终的赢家？这个问题非常复杂。谷歌的社交媒体业务有两个目标：一方面是遏制Facebook 的发展势头；另一方面则是利用Google+收集的数据来改善谷歌的搜索、地图服务和广告等业务。刚铎与佩奇都表示，后一个目标更为重要。刚铎称：“根据这个目标，我们可以进一步改善搜索体验，提高YouTube与Gmail的性能，并使广告更具相关性。Google+将帮助改善公司的所有业务。”

    为了实现这个目标，谷歌并不需要打败Facebook，但它必须坐上社交领域名副其实的第二把交椅。如果说把谷歌与Facebook的关系比作赫兹租车公司（Hertz，全球最大的租车公司——译注）与安飞士汽车租赁公司(Avis，全球第二大租车公司——译注)，或许很离谱。搜索引擎技术网站Search Engine Land的编辑丹尼•苏利文称：“就目前的形势来看，谷歌更像是富田租车公司（Thrifty Car Rental）。”要爬到第二位，谷歌需要在社交领域加大投入。例如，今年10月，一家科技博客网站报道称，包括执行董事长埃里克•施密特在内的多位谷歌高管自己都还没有开通Google+账户。几天后，施密特的账户便悄然出现在Google+上。此外，谷歌还需要其他推动力，那就是提供不同于Facebook的价值定位，说服大量用户转投其阵营，或至少是同时成为这两家社交网站的活跃用户。目前，我们还无法知晓在Google+的4,000万账户中，有多少用户在实际使用该网站。谷歌自然不会透露这一数据。当被问及用户为什么应转投Google+时，谷歌高管一再表示，传统的在线共享功能已被颠覆（这话还是去跟Facebook的8亿用户说吧），而通过圈子功能，Google+用户可以分享他们在真实世界的任何活动（但Facebook现在也具备了这项功能）。

    对于Facebook来说，Google+上线伊始的成功意味着一旦扎克伯格出现失误，后果将难以承受。过去Facebook经常出现产品失策和用户隐私泄露的问题，但基本都得到了外界的谅解，或者不了了之，公司并未遭到过多责难。从现在起，如果Facebook惹恼用户，Google+将很乐意接收他们，当然，他们的朋友也自不必说。因此，扎克伯格现在在继续前进的同时，还必须密切关注佩奇和谷歌的动向。扎克伯格也许可以对Facebook在用户总数上的领先感到欣慰，对成功挖到数十位谷歌高端人才窃喜不已，但佩奇在补充谷歌人员储备方面根本没有什么难度。在最近的这个季度，谷歌新增近2,600名员工，几乎相当于Facebook的员工总数。而新招募的员工肩负着一个明确的使命：将谷歌打造成为社交网络世界的超级巨头。

    译者：阿龙/汪皓

    That last point is not lost on Zuckerberg. It has prompted him to seek closer ties with Google's biggest rival in mobile: Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500). The two companies have held multiple rounds of discussions, according to people with knowledge of the talks. But they have yet to find a compelling way to collaborate, perhaps because their courtship got off to a rocky start. Last year Facebook rebuffed Apple's attempt to connect Ping, a new social network built around iTunes, with Facebook, purportedly for technical reasons. It was a rare public rebuke for Apple, and Steve Jobs personally called some reporters to voice his displeasure. That Apple chose to bake Twitter, not Facebook, into the most recent version of its mobile operating system has not helped. Still, the two companies continue to talk, knowing full well that an alliance could help them fend off a common enemy.

    We know what you're probably thinking: If this is a war, who's going to win? The answer is not straightforward. Google has two goals with social media: One is to slow the momentum of Facebook; the other is to use data from Google+ to improve things like search, maps, and ads. Both Gundotra and Page say the latter goal is the more important one. "We can make search better," Gundotra says. "We can make YouTube and Gmail better. We can make our ads more relevant." He later adds: "Google+ will touch every aspect of Google."

    To meet its goals, Google doesn't need to best Facebook, but it needs to become a credible No. 2. Think Avis to Facebook's Hertz. That's a ways off. "At this point, it's more like Thrifty Car Rental," says Danny Sullivan, the editor of Search Engine Land. To get there, Google needs to drink even more of the social Kool-Aid than it has. Consider this: In October a tech blog reported that several top Google officials, including Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman, had not even set up their own accounts on Google+. A few days later Schmidt's account quietly appeared on the site. Google also needs something else: a value proposition that is different from Facebook's and that compels users to switch in large numbers -- or at least to be active on both sites. At this point, it is not clear how many of the 40 million people with Google+ accounts actually use the site. Google won't say. And when asked why anyone should switch to Google+, executives there say again and again that online sharing is broken (tell that to Facebook's 800 million members) and that with Circles, Google+ users can share as they do in the real world (never mind that Facebook has matched that capability).

    For Facebook, the early successes of Google+ mean Zuckerberg can no longer afford to screw up. In the past, Facebook's frequent product missteps and privacy snafus were by and large forgiven or forgotten. From now on, Google+ will stand at the ready, more than happy to welcome any disgruntled Facebook users -- not to mention their friends. In other words, as he soldiers on, Zuckerberg must now keep an eye on Page and his troops. Yes, Zuckerberg may feel good about Facebook's gaping lead in users and about having poached dozens of Google's prized brainiacs. But Page has had no problem replenishing Google's ranks. In the most recent quarter, Google added nearly 2,600 employees. That's almost as many people as work at Facebook, and they have a clear mandate: to turn Google into a superpower of the social web.