新浪微博何時才能創收?
users must register with their real identities will probably delay the company's revenue-generating plan until the second half of this year.
從那以來，曹國偉已兩次推遲了商業化時間表，預計本月他將再次這麼做。新浪員工表示，政府要求所有微博用戶必須登記真實身份，這很可能將公司的創收計劃推遲至今年下半年。
"That will create a lot of negative sentiment with investors," says Alicia Yap, an analyst at Barclays Capital. "The post-New Year rally will not be sustainable."
“這將在投資者當中產生非常大的負面情緒，”巴克萊資本(Barclay Capital)分析師埃利西亞•雅普(Alicia Yap)表示。“新年後新浪股價的漲勢將無法持續下去。”
Such concerns were reinforced this week, when government officials said that Weibo users who failed to register under their real names by March 16 would no longer be allowed to post messages. Local media have reported that only 3m new users have registered on Sina Weibo over the past month – down from about 20m in earlier months.
政府官員最近表示，從3月16日起，沒有實名註冊的用戶將不準在微博上發言，這使投資者的擔憂進一步加劇。中國媒體報道稱，新浪微博過去一個月新增用戶僅300萬人，低於以往幾個月大約新增2000萬人的水平。
The company's share price already reflects some of these concerns. Following a series of government moves towards tighter censorship of social media, and falling profitability because of the soaring cost of marketing Weibo, Sina shares have lost 54 per cent since their peak of $142.83 on April 19 last year.
這些擔憂已經在新浪的股價中得到了反映。繼政府採取一系列措施收緊對社交媒體的審查，同時微博營銷成本飆升導致盈利能力下降後，新浪股價已從去年4月19日142.83美元的高位下跌54%。
Sina has not been idle, though. "The company has been working hard to lay the ground for monetisation, and it is moving closer," says Dong Xu, a social media expert at Analysys International, an internet research company in Beijing. That includes hiring engineers to strengthen its skills in developing applications and to adjust its platform to new needs.
不過，新浪未曾懈怠。“新浪一直在努力爲微博商業化打基礎，現在離目標更近了，”北京互聯網調研公司易觀國際(Analysys International)的社交媒體專家董旭表示。新浪的努力包括招募工程技術人員來加強應用開發方面的技能，以及調整其平臺以滿足新的需求。
Unlike Tencent, China's largest internet company by revenues and Sina's main rival in the social space, Sina is essentially a media company. Advertising accounted for 77 per cent of its 2011 revenues of $484m, Morgan Stanley estimates.
與中國營收最高的互聯網公司、新浪在社交媒體領域的主要對手騰訊(Tecent)有所不同，新浪在本質上是一家媒體公司。據摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)估計，新浪2011年營業收入爲4.84億美元，其中廣告收入佔到77%。
Investors hope the company can build a business beyond advertising, similar to Facebook, which last week filed for its long-awaited stock market debut to raise $5bn. Such a model would resemble Tencent, whose broad spread of revenue streams has made it much less vulnerable to cyclical swings when advertising falls.
投資者希望新浪把自己打造成一家類似於Facebook、不僅依賴廣告的企業。上週，Facebook提交了期待已久的上市申請，打算融資50億美元。這種模式將和騰訊很相似，騰訊擁有廣泛的收入流，這意味着當廣告收入下降時，該公司受到週期波動的影響要小得多。
Sina has taken steps to prepare for that, including the launch of a gaming platform and a virtual currency. But that is all at an experimental stage and there is scepticism about some areas of monetisation.
新浪已採取行動向這個方向努力，包括推出一個遊戲平臺和一種虛擬貨幣。但這些都處於試驗階段，而且外界對某些領域的商業化前景表示懷疑。
"So far, most things are free," says Xu Zhiming, founder of Kuaishubao, an online bookstore that uses Sina Weibo for its order management and customer relations.
在線書店快書包(Kuaishubao)的創始人徐智明表示，“大多數東西迄今都是免費的。”目前，快書包使用新浪微博進行訂單管理和客戶關係管理。Sina has made its gaming platform free of charge for the first year. Even if it were to start charging, analysts' expectations are very low. This is partly because Sina's user base, which consists largely of white-collar workers in China's largest cities, "are not gamers", says Mr Dong of Analysys.
新浪的遊戲平臺第一年對用戶免收費用。即便開始收費，分析師們的預期也很低。易觀國際的董旭表示，部分原因在於，新浪的用戶羣以中國各大城市的白領爲主，他們“不是遊戲玩家”。
That would leave Sina with advertising. The two main areas of potential here would be the country's soaring e-commerce market and highly targeted ads similar to those on Facebook. Many Chinese e-commerce sites have already linked up to Weibo, but Sina has yet to demand a revenue share for that.
這使得新浪必須依賴廣告。兩個具有潛力的主要領域將是中國蒸蒸日上的電子商務市場，以及類似於Facebook的具有高度針對性的廣告。許多國內電子商務網站都和新浪建立了鏈接，但新浪尚未提出收入分成要求。
The biggest disappointment for industry experts has been lack of progress in targeted ads.
最令行業專家失望的一點是，新浪在定向廣告上進展甚微。
"In theory, Sina has an incredible asset with all this user data, but they don't appear to know how to analyse those data," says a Beijing advertising agent.
一家北京的廣告代理商表示，“在理論上，所有這些用戶數據都是新浪的寶貴資產，但他們好像不懂得如何分析這些數據。”
Despite healthy advertising demand in general, that weakness in reading the data impedes progress, especially in the current political climate. "Brands worry that they could be tied to re-tweeted messages that might be sensitive," says Barcap's Ms Yap.
儘管廣告需求總體上保持穩健，但解讀數據方面的弱點妨礙了新浪的發展，尤其是在當前的政治氣候下。“各品牌擔心，它們可能受到轉發的敏感信息的牽連，”巴克萊資本的雅普表示。
All these things are much less of a problem for Tencent. Although it has a microblog of its own, the Shenzhen-based company sees the service mostly as a tool to wear down Sina and make sure it does not challenge Tencent's lead in social networking in China.
對騰訊而言，所有這些都不算什麼問題。儘管騰訊也推出了自己的微博，但這家總部位於深圳的公司主要把微博服務視爲拖住新浪的一種工具，確保新浪不會挑戰自己在中國社交網站領域的領先地位。
Says a Tencent executive: "We have no plans to monetise our microblog. We don't need to."
一位騰訊高管表示：“我們還沒有使微博商業化的計劃。我們不需要這麼做。”
譯者:邢嵬
