他她話題:Facebook在逆流中前行

The stockmarket has lost no time in unfriending the social network

證券市場正加緊同社交網絡解除好友關係

IT IS still gaining members-there were 955m by the end of June-but Facebook has been losing friends ever since it became a public company on May 18th. Delays in trading on the frenzied opening day were scarcely the social-networking company's fault. But not since that first day has the share price closed above its bloated debut mark of $38; and recently it has lurched lower. It dropped by 8% after hours on July 25th when Zynga, a games company that uses Facebook as a base, reported poor quarterly results, and by another 10% after Facebook's own figures came out the next day. It has fallen further since. On August 1st Facebook's shares closed at $20.88, the lowest yet (see chart).

雖然新用戶仍在不斷增加——到六月底這個數字已經達到9.55億之多——但自從5月18日上市以來，Facebook的支持者卻在流失。瘋狂的上市首日發生的交易延遲的確不應歸咎於這家社交網絡公司。但是自從發行價虛開38美元之後，它的股價就再沒有高過這個數字；最近更是屢創新低。7月25日開盤數小時之後，基於Facebook平臺的遊戲公司Zynga公佈了其糟糕的季度業績，Facebook的股價下跌8%。而第二天，Facebook自己的數據公開之後，股價更是再跌10%。從此就一蹶不振了。8月1日，Facebook的股價收盤於20.88美元，上市以來的新低（見表）。

New shareholders are not the only ones feeling fed up. On July 30th Limited Run, a New York platform for the online shops of record labels, artists and designers, said it would delete its Facebook page. It estimated that 80% of clicks came from "bots"-computers rather than people, but triggering payments to Facebook all the same. Limited Run added that after it changed its name (from Limited Pressing) Facebook asked it to spend $2,000 a month on advertising to change the name of its page on the network to match. Calling Facebook "scumbags", it invited its human visitors to follow it on Twitter instead. Facebook says it is investigating, and that "there seems to be some sort of miscommunication" about the change of page name, for which it does not charge.

並不是只有新股東們感到失望。7月30日，來自紐約的爲唱片、樂手和設計師搭建的線上平臺，Limited Run，宣佈公司將刪除其Facebook主頁。據估計，其80%的主頁點擊都是"機器人"所爲——電腦操縱而非用戶，而他們卻一樣要爲這些點擊向Facebook支付費用。Limited Run補充道，在其改名之後（原先叫Limited Pressing），Facebook還要求其支付一個月2000美元的費用來爲網站主頁的更名打廣告。他們把Facebook看作"小人"，並邀請其用戶轉而關注他們的推特帳號。Facebook稱事情正在調查，並稱關於主頁更名"其中一定有什麼誤會"，因爲這是完全免費的。

In its own way the latest droop in the share price is as mysterious as the bots apparently plaguing Limited Run. Granted, the news from Zynga, which alone provides 10% of Facebook's revenues, was a shock. Facebook made a quarterly loss, of $157m, but that was more than explained by the accounting cost of share-based compensation. And revenue growth slowed, to 32% in the year to the second quarter. Yet that was pretty much what analysts had expected, perhaps a little better.

和明顯成爲Limited Run公司麻煩的那些機器人一樣，近來Facebook股市的萎靡從它自身的角度來看同樣不可理解。的確，Zynga佔到Facebook營業額的10%，其虧損新聞對Facebook是一種打擊。Facebook也確實遭遇了1.57億美元的季度虧損，但這更大程度上是受到分紅補貼成本的影響。從年中的第二季度來看，營業收益額的增長放緩至32%。這和分析師的預測相差無幾，甚至還要好於預期。

Nonetheless, there are reasons to be sceptical about the speed at which Facebook's revenues and profits can grow. In America and much of Europe just about anyone who might want to join already has; and the ratio of daily to monthly users ticked down in North America, Europe and Asia-a sign to some of "Facebook fatigue". So Facebook must make money from the members it has rather than simply by adding new ones. And it must find a way to do so on mobile devices, from which most Facebookers now check the site (56.9% of monthly users did so in the second quarter). There is little space for ads on a smartphone; and ads must not just avoid irritating users, but make them click.

儘管如此，我們還是有理由去懷疑Facebook的營業額及其利潤的增長空間。在美國以及歐洲大部分區域，想要入市的股民早已出現悲觀情緒；而在北美，歐洲以及亞洲，日活躍用戶以及月活躍用戶的比例開始呈現下滑趨勢——這是"Facebook疲乏症"的標誌。所以Facebook需要想法設法從已有用戶身上吸金，而非擴大自己的用戶羣。而且必須在移動設備這塊戰場上發力，因爲大多數的Facebook用戶都是通過移動設備訪問網站的（第二季度數據比重達56.9%）。在智能手機上投放廣告的空間很小；而且廣告不能光做到不侵擾用戶，還要讓他們點擊才行。

I want to sell you a story

"受贊助內容"贏利模式

Facebook sees "sponsored stories" in users' news feeds, the main flow of information about their friends, as the tool for this job. These are ads that companies can pay to highlight with the aim of seeing them spread by recommendation. Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer, told analysts that click-through rates on ads in news feeds were "multiple times better" than on ads to the right of the screen. Ms Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and boss, said stories in news feeds were bringing in more than $1m a day, half of that from mobile devices.

消息推送，已經成爲用戶獲取好友信息的主要渠道。Facebook發現，"受贊助的內容"可以作爲它營收的一個來源。爲了使自己的廣告通過推薦的方式傳播，公司可以支付費用來使其突出顯示。Facebook的首席運營官雪莉·桑德伯格告訴分析師，在消息推送中的廣告點擊率是屏幕右側廣告的"數倍"。Facebook的創立者和老闆，桑德伯格以及馬克·扎克伯格，稱消息推送每天能爲Facebook創收百萬美元以上，其中半數來自移動設備。

That sounds promising, but it is not yet a lot of money. Steve Weinstein of ITG Investment Research says that sponsored stories are "an ad product that is not going to ramp up overnight", which explains the cautious tone of Facebook's bosses. Advertising through friends' recommendations on social networks is still new. So advertisers will need to learn what sponsored stories ought to look like, and then be convinced to spend money on them. They will also need to keep refreshing stories, which in turn will mean more expense.

雖然聽上去充滿希望，但數目並不算是很大。來自ITG投資研究所的史蒂夫·韋恩史蒂恩說，受贊助的內容"不會成爲一夜走紅的廣告產品"，這也和Facebook老闆們的謹慎論調相符合。在社交網站上，通過好友推薦的廣告模式依舊新穎。因此廣告的投放者需要清楚受贊助內容的合理形式，確認之後，再投入資金。他們也需要對內容進行更新，反過來意味着更大的開支。

Mr Zuckerberg and Ms Sandberg also pointed to two other initiatives. One is an exchange on which marketers will be able to bid for ad impressions in real-time. This is standard in the industry, but new for Facebook. The other is a push for ads from small and medium-sized businesses (but not, perhaps, Limited Run). Recently, says Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research Group, big advertisers working with agencies, which accounted for perhaps one-third of Facebook's ad revenue last year, have been building up their spending with Facebook. Spending by small firms and online businesses has stalled, leading to the slowdown in Facebook's growth.

扎克伯格和桑德伯格也提出了兩項新舉措。一個是爲營銷者準備的交流平臺。他們可以實時地對廣告投放位置進行投標。這在工業領域裏是標準，但在Facebook還是全新的嘗試。另一個是推動中小型企業投放廣告（除了Limited Run之外，可能）。來自市場研究機構Pivotal Research Group的分析師布萊恩·威瑟爾最近說，和代理商合作的大型廣告商一直以來都在加強和Facebook的合作關係。這些收入約佔到Facebook去年廣告收入的三分之一。而同時，小型企業和線上業務的開支卻停滯不前，放緩了Facebook的增長勢頭。

With these plans, thinks Mr Wieser, Facebook is doing the right things. He dismisses worries about falling ratios of daily to monthly users. Far more Americans visit Facebook than other social-media sites and they spend more time online there than anywhere else. So there is "no other satisfactory provider for most marketers" with a "social" strategy. He thinks the shares were overpriced at $38 but have now sunk unreasonably low.

威瑟爾認爲，通過這些計劃，Facebook正在沿着正確的方向前進。他對日活躍用戶和月活躍用戶比例下滑的擔憂不屑一顧。在美國，多數人在同類的社交網站中偏愛Facebook；而且比起其他網站，他們也更願意在Facebook上消磨時間。所以，對於大多數營銷者而言，也沒有其他既擁有"社交"戰略，又"令人滿意的平臺提供商"了。他承認開盤價38美元的確過高，但現在跌到如此之低也是不合理的。

Facebook may take comfort from the enthusiasm of others for the social world. This week Google was said to have paid $400m for Wildfire Interactive, a social-marketing firm; Oracle and have also been recent buyers in the field. A new report by the McKinsey Global Institute, the research arm of a consultancy, sees vast untapped potential in companies' use of social technologies (internally, as well as in dealings with customers). Gartner, another research firm, said this week that failing to communicate with customers on social networks could be as damaging to companies as not answering phone calls or e-mails. Mr Weinstein notes that Facebook "is still valued like a very successful business": worth $50 billion, indeed, at only eight years of age.

Facebook會對其他公司對於社交世界的熱忱感到寬慰。谷歌剛剛於這周宣佈，斥資4億美元收購社交營銷公司Wildfire Interactive。甲骨文公司和雲計算公司近來也成爲了這片領域的掠食者。麥肯錫諮詢公司研究部門——麥肯錫全球研究所的一份最新報告表明，在企業對於社交技術的運用上存在着尚待開發的巨大潛力（從內部看，同消費者交易也是如此）。另一家諮詢公司的高德納本週表示，如果企業無法在社交網絡上同客戶交流，其後果將等同於不接電話或是不回郵件，將是破壞性的。韋恩史蒂恩強調，Facebook"仍是一家非常成功的企業"，市值500億美元，而且，僅僅用了八年。