[转帖] [2012.02.04] Floating Facebook: The value of friendship 朋友值千金

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http://www.ecocn.org/thread-63260-1-1.html
Floating Facebook
Facebook上市记

The value of friendship
朋友值千金

Facebook is likely to become a gargantuan company. That will bring risks as well as rewards
在Facebook成长为巨头公司的路上，风险与奖赏并存

Feb 4th 2012 | SAN FRANCISCO | from the print edition



MARK ZUCKERBERG, Facebook’s founder and chief executive, has talked for years about the notion of a “social graph” which connects people to their friends and all of the things they are interested in. By encouraging hundreds of millions of people to share their deeds and reveal their innermost thoughts, profane or profound, online, his company has in effect mapped a portion of this graph on its computers. According to the Onion, a satirical publication, the whole thing was the CIA’s idea; digging up this amount of information the old-fashioned way would have cost the spooks a fortune.

Facebook创始人兼首席执行官马克•扎克伯格谈论“社交图谱“这一概念已经有些年头了。社交图谱能够将人们和他们的朋友以及他们感兴趣的一切事物连结起来。事实上通过鼓励数亿用户在线分享自己的需求，流露出或阳春白雪或下里巴人的心声，facebook已经画出了这幅图谱的一部分。据幽默讽刺出版物洋葱新闻（the Onion）报道，这整个事件都是美国中央情报局（CIA）的主意。CIA若想用传统方法挖到这么多情报可要花大量人力物力。

These billions of electronic nodes and links will soon make a fortune for Mr Zuckerberg, still only 27, who owns 28.4% of Facebook and will continue to control most of the voting rights. It will also enrich other shareholders, many of them employees. On February 1st the company announced plans for an initial public offering (IPO) that will raise $5 billion, maybe more, in the largest flotation ever of an internet company. Not since Google’s IPO in 2004—the year that Facebook was founded—have techies and venture capitalists been so aflutter. Facebook’s flotation, which is likely to take place in the spring, will create a publicly quoted tech giant that will stand alongside American technology titans such as Amazon, Apple and Google itself.

这些数十亿的虚拟节点及链接马上将为这位年仅27岁的扎克伯格先生挣得一大桶金。扎克伯格先生控制了Facebook28.4%的股份，并将继续控制大部分的投票权。这同样也能惠及其他股东，其中包括Facebook的很多雇员。2月1日该公司公布了首次公开募股计划（IPO），计划募集资金50亿元乃至更多，这是迄今为止互联网公司中最大的一比筹资。自谷歌（Google）于2004年，也就是Facebook创建的那一年，进行的IPO后，技术员和风投家们还是第一次这么激动。通过可能于春季进行的募股，Facebook将成为与亚马逊（Amazon），苹果（Apple）和谷歌并肩的上市科技公司巨头。

The document Facebook filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealed details of its finances for the first time (see chart 1). Last year the company had sales of $3.7 billion, a little below recent estimates, and made a net profit of $1 billion. The network boasts 845m users, which, were Facebook a country, would make it the world’s third most populous, behind China and India. Some of the other statistics associated with it are also mind-boggling. Every day 250m photos are uploaded to the site. One out of every seven minutes spent online is on Facebook, according to comScore, a research firm.

Facebook提交给美国证券交易委员会（SEC）的文件第一次揭露了公司的财务明细（参见表一）。上一年度该公司的营业额稍低于近来外界预测数，为37亿美元，净利润为10亿美元。整个社交网络有845,000,000名成员，这意味着，如果Facebook是一个国家的话，它将是仅次于中国和印度的世界第三人口大国。其他有关于这家公司的数据同样令人难以置信。据研究公司comScore统计，每天有250,000,000张图片上传至该网站，每七分钟的上网时间，就有一分钟是在花在Facebook上。



Facebook’s stunning progress has earned the company estimated valuations of between $75 billion and $100 billion. Private trading in its shares on secondary markets has implied a value of more than $80 billion. That would be more than 20 times last year’s revenues—and more than 80 times last year’s net income. These are eye-wateringly high multiples.

Facebook因其令人瞠目的成就，市值被估计在750亿美元至1000亿美元之间。二级市场中Facebook的私人股权交易显现出不低于800亿的市值。这是该公司上一年度收入的20几倍，净收入的80几倍。翻了这么多倍真是让人热泪盈眶啊。

The case for thinking such a valuation is justified rests in part on a couple of broad technological trends that show no signs of going into reverse. The first is the rapid spread of internet connectivity, which is making Facebook accessible to ever more people. (The Boston Consulting Group reckons that around 3 billion people will be online by 2016, up from 1.6 billion in 2010.) The second is the rise of the mobile phone. Already more than 425m people are tapping into Facebook on these devices and in future most of the social network’s growth will come from the mobile web. Together, these trends could propel the number of users beyond 1 billion.

数波毫无逆转迹象的科技大潮部分解释了如此高市值的原因。首先是互联网的迅速普及，Facebook得以有更多的受众（波士顿咨询公司Boston Consulting Group预计到Facebook线上用户将由2010年的16亿上升至2016年的30亿）。其次是手机的风靡。已经有超过425，000,000人在手机上登陆Facebook,且这一社交网络将来的发展多将依靠移动网络。这两股潮流能给Facebook带来多于10亿的用户。

Admittedly, other social networks will be helped by this too. But Facebook stands to benefit the most because Mr Zuckerberg and his colleagues have cleverly positioned the site as a “social utility”, as he once put it, which lets people do all kinds of things, from passing on newspaper articles to playing games or posting photos of themselves, their friends or their pets. They can do more and more, because Facebook has enticed outside developers to create software “apps” that run on its platform and has itself constantly improved the platform. The site is just beginning to roll out its latest innovation, Timeline, which encourages Facebookers to build an online chronicle of their entire lives.

必须承认的是，其他的社交网络也能从这些潮流中受益。但由于扎克伯格及一干同事对Facebook明智的定位，他们无疑将分得最大一杯羹。Facebook的定位为扎克伯格曾提到过的“社交福利”，人们可以做一切能想到的事，从传阅报纸文章到玩游戏亦或是上传他们自己、朋友或者宠物的照片。他们可以享受的服务越来越多：Facebook已经花重金请第三方开发可以在自身平台上运行的应用软件，并不断改进平台。该网站正筹备推出最新研发的功能Timeline，这一功能可以帮助用户创建在线编年体自传。

All this explains why people are now spending far more time on Facebook than on rival web services such as Google (see chart 2) and why it has benefited from strong network effects. It is spreading fast across emerging markets such as India and Brazil, where it recently dethroned Google’s Orkut as the leading social network (see map). One reason why Facebook was able to topple Orkut is that people began to join it in droves to keep in touch with friends abroad who were already on the network. In Russia it is tussling with local rivals such as VKontakte. Some countries have tried to block it; China is the biggest one.

所有这些都解释了为什么人们在Facebook上花的时间远多于它的劲敌比如谷歌（Google）（参见表二）以及Facebook是怎样受益于强大的互联网效应。它在新兴市场如印度、巴西迅速攻城略地，最近更是取代谷歌研发的Orkut，登上了这些地区社交网络的领袖宝座。新兴市场的用户为了与国外经加入Facebook社交网络的朋友们保持联系而纷纷加入其中，这也是Facebook使Orkut的统治轰然倒塌的原因之一。在俄罗斯，Facebook与地头蛇如VKontakte相争。在某些国家，Facebook面临封锁，中国就是其中最大的一家。

The fact that China is off-limits to Facebook leaves a huge hole in its social graph. It also leaves the world’s largest population in the hands of Chinese social networks such as Renren and Tencent, which owns Qzone. In the past, Facebook has toyed with trying to find a local partner in the country. And Mr Zuckerberg has even taken Mandarin lessons as one of the personal challenges he likes to set himself (another was to eat only animals he had killed with his own hands). But for now, the country remains tantalisingly out of reach.

Facebook在中国的受限使其社交图谱上留下一个大缺口，使中国本土社交网络如人人，经营QQ空间的腾讯占据了世界第一大人口大国的市场。扎克伯格甚至将学说普通话列入他给自己制定的个人挑战中（还包括只食用亲手猎杀的动物）。不过迄今为止，中国对Facebook来说仍是镜花水月。

If it can crack China in future, Facebook will become an even more attractive destination for advertisers. Last year the social network surged past Yahoo! to become the biggest force in America’s online display-advertising market (see chart 3). Some 85% of its revenue came from ads and there are grounds to think it can mint far bigger sums of money from advertising in future.

倘若未来它能拿下中国，Facebook对于广告商来说将更为炙手可热。上一年度这一社交网络打败雅虎（Yahoo！）成为全美最大的线上广告投放市场（参见表三）。广告占据了Facebook85%的收入来源，且未来极有可能带来远胜于此的收益。


What friends are for
朋友的价值

For a start, the network is working overtime to harvest even more data from Facebookers which it can use to aim ads at them. Last September, it unveiled a new set of social apps (including a forthcoming one from The Economist) that allow people to do things like watch films, listen to music and read news on Facebook rather than going elsewhere on the web to do so. These are all part of its ambitious plan to map all of the connections between people and the things that interest them.

Facebook日以继夜的试图在用户，同样也是广告的目标群身上挖出更多信息，这还只是个开始。去年九月，该公司推出了一系列社交应用（其中之一出自经济学人，人们通过这些应用可以在Facebook上一站搞定看电影，听音乐，了解新闻等事情。这都是Facebook雄心勃勃的计划中的一环，力图将人们间的联系及感兴趣的事物一网打尽。

Facebook could also make more money by creating an advertising network that takes advantage of the already extensive reach of its tentacles across the internet. Millions of websites are integrated with it through various software it has developed, including “social plug-ins” that allow people to share their activities and interests elsewhere on the web (a song they are listening to, say, or a newspaper article they have read) with their Facebook friends. This has made it an important source of traffic to other websites and it could offer to help them sell ads, pocketing a percentage of the money raised. Some analysts think this could bring in as much revenue as ad sales on Facebook’s own site.

Facebook可以利用它在网上无孔不入的触角编织成一张广告网，以此获取更多盈利。通过自行研发的种类繁多的软件，包括可以让人们分享他们在大千网络中的兴趣和进行的活动（他们正在听的歌或看过的报纸文章）的“赞”按钮，Facebook和数以百万计的网站紧密相连。这些软件给其它网站带来大量点击量，因此可以帮助它们获得广告收入，将筹集的部分资金收入囊中。有些分析人士认为这笔收入与Facebook站内的销售额相当。

There is also a strong possibility that the company will attack the online-search business, which accounts for almost half of online ad revenue in America, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, an industry body. After all, the social network already knows a lot about how people’s recommendations affect their friends’ choices. “Some form of social-discovery feature on Facebook is inevitable,” says Joe Green, the boss of Causes.com, a web business that promotes activism and philanthropy. Google, which dominates search-related advertising, clearly agrees: last month it began incorporating data from Google+, its own, much smaller social network, into its search results.

据行业研究机构——美国互动广告局（Interactive Advertising Bureau）称，Facebook极有可能将手伸向在线搜索引擎业务，这一业务几乎占据全美网络广告收入的半壁江山。毕竟，这一社交网络深谙人们的推荐怎样影响他们朋友的选择。“Facebook在社交发现特征的一些形式真是难以置信”，Causes.com的老总乔•格林(Joe Green)说道。这是一家旨在推动进步和慈善事业的网站。统治搜索相关广告的谷歌显然很认同：上个月谷歌开始将从它旗下规模较小的社交网络Google+得到的数据应用于它的搜索结果。

As more people use Facebook from mobile phones, the company will also be able to sell ads that appear on these devices. The difficult bit will be to find formats that are not too intrusive on a small screen. Facebook could well end up using “sponsored stories”, which allow, for instance, a music publisher to pay for a link to its website to be embedded in posts that mention its artists.

随着越来越多用户从手机上登陆Facebook,该公司又能出售呈现在移动终端的广告。找到适合在小屏幕上展示的版式却是个难题。Facebook通过推出“受赞助的内容”（sponsored stories）这一广告形式解决了这一难题。例如音乐出版公司可以付费在提到过该公司旗下艺人的分享中公司链接。

Hussein Fazal, the chief executive of AdParlor, which manages Facebook advertising campaigns for companies, believes the social network’s ad revenues could one day surpass those of Google, which is estimated to have made $40 billion from advertising last year. “Social advertising is a massive movement,” he says.

AdParlor首席执行官侯赛因•法扎尔（Hussein Fazal）为许多公司策划了投放于Facebook的广告。他坚信Facebook的广告业务营业收入有天能超过谷歌，据估计后者上一年度的广告业务营业收入为400亿美元。“社交广告是大势所趋”，他说道。

It probably is, but movements can take many years to come to fruition. And it will be harder to build an advertising business based on a social
network than one based on search, like Google’s. Google’s ads are effective because they are presented when people are looking for something specific. Facebook’s may be less effective, because people go to the site when they want to socialise, not search for stuff or buy things. That is why Google’s search ads command higher rates than Facebook’s display ads. And the effectiveness of Facebook advertising is trickier to measure.

这可能是事实，但这一趋势距开花结果可能仍遥遥无期。并且比起基于搜索的广告业务如谷歌，基于社交网络的广告业务更为艰难。谷歌的广告能在人们有针对性搜索某项事物时出现，因此更为有效。Facebook的可能不那么有效，因为人们不是出于搜索或购买某事物，而是仅为社交才登陆Facebook。

Moreover, although some brands, such as Starbucks, have managed to draw huge, engaged audiences on Facebook, others have had a frustrating experience. To some extent, they should blame themselves: a study by Socialbakers, which gathers social-media statistics, found that 95% of posts to brands’ pages on Facebook went unanswered. The chances are that Mr Zuckerberg will use at least some of the money the firm raises from its IPO to buy ad-measurement firms and social-media consulting outfits to help its corporate customers get more out of the network.

进一步说，尽管某些品牌如星巴克能够从Facebook上吸引大量稳定的客源，其他品牌大多事倍功半。在某些程度上他们应该怪自己： Socialbakers的一项研究通过统计社交媒体的数据发现，Facebook95%的品牌广告页面都是无回应的。只能寄希望于扎克伯格会从其首次公开募股筹集的资金里拿出一部分收购一家广告管理公司和社交媒体资讯公司，以帮助它的合作伙伴从这一社交网络中获益更多。

At the same time, Facebook will pour more resources into areas other than advertising. A promising one is a nascent online-payments service based on Facebook Credits, a virtual currency. The social network insists that gamesmakers use Credits within their apps that run on Facebook and pockets 30% of the proceeds from sales of digital and virtual goods. So far a single firm, Zynga, a social-gaming company that staged its own IPO in December, accounts for most of this income—and for 12% of Facebook’s total revenue.

同时，Facebook将把资源投入除广告业以外的其它领域。基于虚拟货币Facebook Credits的尚未成熟的网上支付服务是比较有“钱途”的一项。Facebook坚持让游戏开发商在他们开发的Facebook应用中使用Facebook Credits，并且享受数字或虚拟货物销售额的30%。目前为止一家12月进行了首次公开募股的社交游戏公司Zynga在这项收入中一枝独秀，并占了Facebook总收入的12%

Mr Zuckerberg hopes that other firms will use Facebook’s platform to disrupt industries from travel to health care in the same way that Zynga has shaken up the world of electronic games. That would allow Facebook to make even more money from the blossoming transactions on its platform. Payments and other fees brought in $557m last year, up from $106m in 2010.

扎克伯格希望像Zynga 颠覆了电子游戏界一样，其他公司也能利用同样Facebook这一平台改造从旅游业到医疗业等各色行业。这样一来，Facebook可以从这一平台上欣欣向荣的交易中大赚一笔。支付款项和其它费用2010年给Facebook带来了106,000,000美元，2011年上升至557,000,000美元。

There could be a much bigger prize, especially if Facebook can turn Credits into a currency that is accepted elsewhere on the web—and perhaps even off it. The network could try to strike deals to let its currency be used on other sites that are already integrated with it. It could even seek to compete with online-payments giants such as PayPal, an arm of eBay. Coping with the thicket of rules in this area would be a nightmare, but the rewards could be huge: last year PayPal’s revenues amounted to $4.4 billion.

这笔收入本可以更大，尤其是若Facebook将Credits变成网络甚至现实世界中的通用货币。这一社交网络首先可以尝试和它的合作站点订立协议，将Credits在这些站点通用。它甚至可以向eBay旗下的网上支付巨头PayPal寻求竞争。与这一领域根基最稳的对手谋皮无疑是噩梦一场，但富贵险中求：PayPal上一年度的收入达到44亿美元。

Facebook’s currency may also come in handy if the company makes a serious effort in social commerce, the buying of goods and services through social-networking sites. A number of firms, such as Procter & Gamble, an American consumer-goods company, have set up virtual shops on Facebook and it is still too early to tell whether “s-commerce” will catch on. But some observers think that the influence of friends on people’s buying habits mean it will be huge. Booz & Company, a consulting firm, has estimated that the value of goods sold through social media will rise from $5 billion in 2011 to $30 billion by 2015.

社交商务是利用社交网络站点购买商品与服务。如果Facebook在这方面下一番苦功，它的货币也能大展身手。若干公司都在Facebook上开了网店，例如美国日用消费品公司宝洁（ Procter & Gamble）。谈论社交商务会不会流行起来还为时过早，但某些观察人士认为人们受朋友购买习惯的影响很大，这意味着社交商务大有可为。咨询公司博斯（Booz & Company）估计通过社交媒体成交的商品总额将由2011年的50亿美元上升至2015年的300亿美元。

My empty space
我的虚拟空间

Even its rivals admit that Facebook has the potential to be one of the most valuable companies on the planet. Much will depend on its management. In 2008 Mr Zuckerberg cleverly poached Sheryl Sandberg from Google to be Facebook’s chief operating officer. The only other “critical person” named in the offer document this week, Ms Sandberg has become almost as well known as the founder. Hanging on to her may be difficult (some people wonder whether she could be lured into politics). Many of Facebook’s employees will soon be enormously rich. The transition from edgy start-up to established giant will not be easy. And there are other risks too.

就算是Facebook的劲敌也不得不承认Facebook有潜力成长为全球最有价值的公司之一。这大部分得依仗于它的管理。2008年扎克伯格明智地从谷歌挖来雪莉•桑德伯格（Sheryl Sandberg），任命为Facebook首席运营官。雪莉•桑德伯格在本周的任命文书里被称作她除扎克伯格以外的二巨头之一，这使她快赶得上创始人这般声名远播了。不过Facebook想留住这位首席运营官可能有点困难（人们猜想她可能会涉足政治）。Facebook的许多员工马上将一夜暴富。不过从后起之秀到行业巨鳄仍道阻且长。

One is that people stop using Facebook, either because they lose interest or because they are put off by its behaviour. As News Corporation discovered to its cost after it splashed out $580m on Myspace in 2005, network effects can also go quickly into reverse. Once large numbers of people started leaving the service, which became more cluttered than a teenager’s bedroom, it proved hard to stem the tide. Last year, News Corp sold the business for just $35m.

一个隐忧便是人们或因为兴趣缺缺或因为反感其行为而撤离Facebook。互联网效应可能很快逆转，新闻集团在2005年为 Myspace一掷千金，挥霍了580,000,000美元，便尝到了其中苦果。一旦大批用户离开，独留下这个比青少年卧室还要狼藉的站点，它也无力回天了。去年，新闻集团仅索要了35,000,000元就把这桩生意脱手了。

There is some evidence that Facebook’s growth may be slowing in some markets. But this is because just about everybody who might join the social network in those countries has already done so, rather than because of any widespread dissatisfaction. That said, there has been some grumbling about Facebook, most recently because of its decision to force people to adopt the Timeline feature rather than allow them to opt into it. Such imperiousness could also damage the firm’s ability to generate money. John Gerzema of Y&R, an advertising agency, notes that its surveys of consumers show that Facebook is perceived as increasingly arrogant. “I’m not sure that an ‘Occupy Facebook’ movement is coming next,” he says, “but there is a cold, steely image emerging that could limit the network’s penetration and usage.”

Facebook在某些市场上增速放缓已经初现端倪。但究其原因，并非出于对Facebook的普遍不满，只是因为这些国家该加入Facebook的目标群都已被收罗。由于Facebook强迫用户接受Timeline而非自发接受，近来颇有些风言风语。Facebook募集资金的行为可能因为这一霸王条款受阻。广告代理公司扬•罗比凯（Y&R)的John Gerzema提到该公司对客户的调查显示出Facebook在人们心中日益强横的形象。“我不确定‘占领Facebook’行动会不会发生”，他说道，“但冷酷强硬的新形象会使该公司的扩张及作用受限。”

Being seen as something other than warm and cuddly is not in itself a bar to becoming a gigantic business. There are plenty of precedents. Y&R’s research also shows that Apple is perceived as arrogant, but that has not stopped people treating its products with almost religious reverence and turning it into the world’s most valuable listed company. Nevertheless, users could be less forgiving of Facebook in future if it infuriates them.

在大众眼中被视作冷酷强硬并不会成为Facebook成为行业巨鳄的拦路虎。在它之前还有很多前辈。扬•罗比凯的调查显示苹果同样也被视作傲慢自大，但这并不妨碍人们怀着几近
宗教信仰般的狂热对它的产品顶礼膜拜，也成就了它全球最有价值的上市公司的名号。但是，如果将来Facebook惹怒他们，用户们可不会善罢甘休。

Facebook has also had occasional brushes with privacy watchdogs, for which the social network has become something of a bête noire. Last year Facebook incurred the wrath of America’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The commission had been inundated with complaints that the company was making public data about its users that it had said would be kept private. As part of a settlement with the FTC, Facebook agreed to submit to an external audit of its privacy policies and practices every two years for the next 20 years.

Facebook与隐私监管机构也偶有摩擦，在这些机构眼中Facebook简直是祸水。去年Facebook点燃了美国联邦贸易委员会（America’s Federal Trade Commission)的怒火。对该公司将本应保密的用户数据泄露的投诉使FTC不堪其扰。作为与FTC达成协议的一部分，Facebook承诺接受针对它家隐私条例的额外审查，这一审查在接下来的二十年里每两年举行一次。

The bigger risk to Facebook is that growing concern over online privacy translates into a wave of legislation around the world that makes it far harder for the company to exploit the mountains of data it is collecting. That would throw a spanner into the works of its money-spinning advertising machine. So far there has been little sign of such a backlash, though governments are paying closer attention to privacy. America is thinking of creating a general consumer-privacy law and the European Union is updating its rules.

对网络隐私权的担忧日渐增长，并演变成一股席卷全世界的立法浪潮，这才是Facebook面临的严重风险。针对网络隐私权的立法意味着Facebook利用它收集来的堆积如山的用户数据将困难重重，也对它吸金的广告业形成障碍。尽管政府对隐私权格外留心，社会上到目前为止还没有强烈抵制的迹象。美国打算制定一部全面的消费者隐私保护法，欧盟也在修订相关条文。

Facebook will also need to tread carefully as it seeks to use its internal currency to extract rent from its platform. If it gets too greedy, it could deter new firms from using its ecosystem and ultimately drive away those that are already paying it substantial sums of money. There has in the past been friction between it and Zynga, which is building a web and mobile platform of its own, called Zynga Direct, in order to reduce its reliance on Facebook. It could be, of course, that Facebook is so dominant in social networking that Zynga and others find themselves with no alternative. In that case, Facebook could run into trouble of a different sort: as it gets bigger, the company may find itself under the gaze of antitrust regulators.

若想利用它内部通用的货币从平台中获益，Facebook须得小心，以免行差步错。如果太急功近利，不仅新加盟的公司会被吓走，最终带来不菲收益的老合作伙伴也会离开。Zynga就因为旧隙，索性自行成立了网络和移动平台Zynga Direct以避免对Facebook过于依赖。当然，也可能是因为Facebook在社交网络领域一家独大，Zynga及其他公司别无选择。果真是这样的话，Facebook可就陷入了另一桩麻烦：随着它日益扩张，facebook可能招来反垄断监管机构的关注。

Markets in which network effects are important have a tendency towards monopoly. The most topical example is search: Google seems to be the focus of trustbusters’ attention. But as Facebook expands, it too could find itself being accused of abusing its dominance by smaller fry. For this and other reasons, one of the things Facebook is certain to do with the cash it raises will be to hire a much bigger army of lawyers and lobbyists.

互联网效应很有影响力的市场都有向垄断发展的趋势。最典型的例子就是搜索：Google似乎已成为反垄断者的眼中钉，如果Facebook继续扩张，也同样难逃同行小公司的口诛笔伐。出于诸如此类的原因，Facebook最紧要的就是利用募集的资金请一大帮律师及公关。

The social network’s IPO will also set the stage for an epic battle between the titans of the tech industry. It has been clear for some time that Google is squarely in Facebook’s sights—and that Facebook is in Google’s. But as Facebook builds its social-app platform and takes it onto mobile devices, it will pose more of a competitive threat to Apple and Amazon too. Perhaps Facebook will be tempted to use some of the cash from its IPO to strike a partnership with a hardware company to produce a “Facebook phone” with a Facebook-created social operating system.

Facebook的IPO同样为科技公司巨鳄们史诗般的战役搭建了战场。显然Facebook和谷歌早已有了一决高下的想法。但随着Facebook搭建了社交应用平台并推广到移动终端上，苹果和亚马逊也受到了重重一击。或许尝到了甜头的Facebook哪天就利用IPO募集的资金与某家硬件公司合作，生产出运用Facebook自行研发的社交操作系统的"Facebook phone"呢。

Such a device would be entirely in keeping with Mr Zuckerberg’s belief, outlined in a letter which accompanied the IPO filing, that things should be “social by design”. The missive went on to explain that anyone investing in the company’s stock would be buying into a firm that would sometimes put its long-term mission of making the world more open and connected ahead of short-term financial considerations.

这一产品倒是和扎克伯格的信念高度一致。扎克伯格在Facebook上市文件中发表公开信强调：产品都应该“为社交而设计”。公开信还阐述了Facebook将把使世界更为开放，更加紧密相连的长期目标置于经济利益的短期目标之上，任何投资该公司的股东都是投资于这样一家公司。

Mr Zuckerberg’s social-ist manifesto also made clear that Facebook would stick to what he calls “the Hacker Way”—a nod to “the HP Way” which encapsulated the ethos of the founders of Hewlett-Packard. Facebook has hitherto been able to focus on fostering an innovative culture that encourages employees to move fast and take risks. New programmers are encouraged to push out code onto its platform in their first week on the job and the company regularly holds all-night “hackathons”. Preserving this spirit will be vital if Facebook is to present its new investors with the graph that they will most want to see: one that shows a steadily rising share price.

扎克伯格的社交属性宣言明确地表示Facebook将坚持他所说的“黑客之道”——也是对凝聚了惠普（Hewlett-Packard）创始人精神的“惠普之道”的致敬。迄今，Facebook能够在企业内部推行创新文化，鼓励雇员勇担风险，敏捷行事。新晋程序员在入职第一周就被鼓励在平台上推出代码，并且公司时常举行通宵“黑客马拉松”。保持这种精神对于Facebook至关重要，只要它想向新股东们呈现他们最渴望的蓝图：Facebook稳步攀升的股价。

注释：
[1]洋葱新闻（the Onion）:“洋葱”是美国一家提供讽刺新闻的组织。它以报道讽刺性文章为特色，文章内容涉及国内外以及当地的消息，在它的旗下还有娱乐性的报纸和网站。它以真实新闻事件为蓝本，加工杜撰假新闻。虽然故事都是假的，却绝非胡编瞎造，而是用夸张的想象表达对世界观感，是另类的社会评论，因此有不少读者追捧。

[2]时间轴功能（Timeline）：该功能是个人档案的改版，以时间轴呈现完整的个人记录。新的展示方式更可以发挥使用者的创意，创造属于自己的个人首页。

[3]Orkut：Orkut是Google公司推出的社会性网络服务。通过这一服务，用户可以在互联网上建立一个虚拟社会关系网。

[4]VKontakte：VKontakte是俄罗斯最大的社交网站，它是大学生和高校毕业生的联系网，vkontakte的俄语意思就是“结交”。由于其设计风格以及功能都与美国Facebook十分相似，因此VKontakte.ru也经常被称为“克隆Facebook”。

[5]Causes.com：该公司利用Facebook等社交网站为平台，帮助慈善机构和非营利组织募集资金。其创始人是乔·格林，扎克伯格的大学室友以及Facebook前总裁西恩·帕克（Sean Parker）。

[6]受赞助的内容（sponsored story）：今年1月份，Facebook新推出了一种名为“Sponsored Stories（受赞助的内容）”的广告形式。广告主们可以用它把你的一些活动变成只有你的朋友能看到的，显示在主页上的广告。这些Facebook活动包括“赞”一个Facebook页面，在Facebook Places签到，或从一个Facebook应用程序共享内容到新闻源中。

[7] AdParlor： AdParlor是一家Facebook广告管理平台服务公司，其每天管理Facebook平台上超过10亿的广告曝光量。它为例如团购网站Groupon、及Ubisoft等社交游戏公司管理Facebook的广告投放业务，并为公司提供一个自助式的社交网络广告管理平台。

[8]Zynga:Zynga是一个社交游戏公司，于2007年6月成立。Zynga开发的游戏多半是网页游戏，并发布于Facebook以及MySpace一类的社交网站。著名的FarmVille（开心农庄）是其旗下团队研发。

[9]聚友网（MySpace）:MySpace是以SNS为基础的娱乐平台，是全球最大的在线交友平台MySpace的中国本地化网站，提供免费的微型博客、个人主页、个人空间、电子相册、博客空间、音乐和视频上传空间等服务。2011年6月数字媒体公司Specific Media宣布，以3500万美元的价格从新闻集团手中购得社交网站MySpace，新闻集团只保留少部分MySpace的股权。

[10]美国联邦贸易委员会(FTC):FTC是执行多种反托拉斯和保护消费者法律的联邦机构。FTC的目的是确保国家市场行为具有竞争性。且繁荣、高效地发展，不受不合理的约束。FTC也通过消除不合理的和欺骗性的条例或规章来确保和促进市场运营的顺畅。

[11]黑客之道（the Hacker Way:）：黑客之道既是Facebook的公司文化，也是管理方法。这里的黑客指能快速做出东西或者喜欢探索极限的人。他们相信事情总是能更好，在人们都在说不可能或者满足现状的时候，他们只管动手干。黑客之道就是持续改进和迭代地不断前进。