微信用戶突破5億 問鼎世界最大社交應用之一
WeChat, the Chinese social media smartphone app, saw an increase in user numbers of 41 per cent year on year to 500m at the end of 2014, in a sign that parent company Tencent is extending its reach for the mobile internet.
Tencent made the announcement on Wednesday, as it reported results that missed analysts’ forecasts. Fourth-quarter net profits were up 51 per cent year on year and net income for the quarter ending December increased to Rmb5.95bn.
騰訊是在週三發佈財報時宣佈上述消息的，財報中的業績低於分析師此前的預期。2014年第四季度淨利潤同比增長51%，至59.5億元人民幣。Analysts had estimated net income would be Rmb6.26bn, according to a Reuters poll but performance was weighed down by the costs of content deals with the likes of HBO and the US National Basketball Association.
路透社(Reuters)調查顯示，分析師此前預計該季度淨利潤將爲62.6億元人民幣，但騰訊與美國家庭電影頻道(HBO)和美國全國籃球協會(US National Basketball Association)等機構達成內容協議的花費拉低了業績。
Revenue grew 24 per cent to Rmb20.98bn, slightly higher than forecasts, driven mainly by online gaming revenues.
2014年末季營收同比增長24%，至209.8億元人民幣，略高於預期，主要推動因素是在線遊戲收入。It is unclear how much WeChat contributed to Tencent’s revenues but the app’s growth is a strong indicator of the company’s long-term health as it tries to adjust its business to be more suitable for mobile devices.
尚不清楚微信對騰訊的營收做出了多少貢獻，但這款應用的增長是該公司長期前景良好的強有力指標。騰訊正努力使其業務更適合移動設備。“We extended our leadership in games and online media, and made breakthroughs in emerging platforms such as online security . . . and mobile payments,” Ma Huateng, Tencent chairman, said in a statement.
騰訊董事長馬化騰在一份聲明中表示：“我們在遊戲和在線媒體領域擴大了領先優勢，在網絡安全……和移動支付等新興平臺上取得了突破。”WeChat is the second highest ranked app in China, behind QQ, Tencent’s other chatting app, which claimed to have 815m registered monthly users at the end of 2014. However, that figure is more than the total number of internet users in China, which the government puts at 649m.
微信是中國排名第二的應用，僅次於騰訊的另一款聊天軟件QQ，後者據稱在2014年底有8.15億月活躍賬戶。然而，這個數字比中國網民總數還要多，後者的官方數據是6.49億人。Tencent has been reluctant to monetise WeChat by flooding it with advertising, which could impair efforts to increase the user base. But this is expected to change.
騰訊迄今不願在微信上大量投放廣告賺錢，以免損害其擴大用戶數量的努力。但這一點預計將會改變。Ricky Lai, at Guotai Junan International, a Hong Kong brokerage, said analysts anticipated that advertising would be introduced on a large scale later this year.
香港券商國泰君安國際(Guotai Junan International)的分析師賴健邦(Ricky Lai)表示，分析師們預計微信將於今年晚些時候大量推出廣告。Early attempts to test ads on the service have not always gone smoothly. After a BMW ad was introduced on some users’ feeds in January, many users who were not targeted by the luxury brand’s marketing complained of “discrimination” by Tencent’s data mining algorithm. They claimed it unfairly profiled them as not wealthy or successful enough to view the sought-after BMW ad.
微信此前投放廣告的嘗試並不總是順利。今年1月微信對一些用戶試投放一支寶馬(BMW)廣告之後，許多沒有看到這個奢侈品牌廣告的用戶不滿地表示，自己受到了騰訊數據挖掘算法的“歧視”。他們聲稱，這個算法不公平地認定他們爲不夠有錢或不夠成功，不配看到這支熱門的寶馬廣告。
