Older. And wiser?

老當(dāng)益壯？

Facebook’s core business is maturing, as its boss clearly sees. Its operating margins—42%, excluding $3bn set aside to cover an expected fine by America’s Federal Trade Commission for privacy violations—remain the envy of the tech world (see article). In the latest quarter revenue grew by 26% compared with the previous year, exceeding $15bn. But user growth is slowing. In some rich countries, especially European ones, it is flat. The young prefer social media which are more “intimate” and “ephemeral”, like Snapchat, which pioneered “stories”, messages and pictures that disappear after 24 hours—and which Facebook aped. More than 500m users of Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp now post stories every day.

Facebook老板清楚地看到的那樣，F(xiàn)acebook的核心業(yè)務(wù)正在成熟。它的營業(yè)利潤率(42%，不包括30億美元用于支付美國聯(lián)邦貿(mào)易委員會(Federal Trade Commission)預(yù)計因侵犯隱私而處以的罰款)，仍然讓科技界艷羨不已。最近一個季度的收入同比增長26%，超過150億美元。但用戶增長正在放緩。在一些富裕國家，尤其是歐洲國家，幾乎沒有增長。年輕人更喜歡更“親密”、更“短暫”的社交媒體，比如Snapchat，它開創(chuàng)了“故事”、24小時后就會消失的消息和圖片——Facebook也在效仿。Instagram、Messenger和WhatsApp的逾5億用戶現(xiàn)在每天都在發(fā)布故事。

詞匯

operating margin/營業(yè)毛利

?

Mr Zuckerberg expects migration from the online “town square” to a digital “l(fā)iving room” to continue; stories may soon outnumber posts on Facebook’s newsfeed. The plan is to build it around WhatsApp, which already offers secure texting. It would let users find each other, pay digital and offline shopkeepers, or purchase a cornucopia of online services—perhaps one day using Facebook’s own currency. In time, the thinking goes, it may become as indispensable to Westerners as WeChat is in China.

扎克伯格預(yù)計，從在線“城鎮(zhèn)廣場”向數(shù)字“客廳”的遷移將繼續(xù)下去;在Facebook的新聞推送中，故事的數(shù)量可能很快就會超過帖子。該公司計劃圍繞已經(jīng)提供安全短信服務(wù)的WhatsApp開發(fā)這款應(yīng)用。它將讓用戶找到彼此，支付數(shù)字和線下店主，或者購買豐富的在線服務(wù)——也許有一天會使用Facebook自己的貨幣。有人認(rèn)為，假以時日，它可能會像微信在中國一樣，成為西方人不可或缺的東西。

詞匯

Cornucopia/豐饒的象征

Some elements of the new platform already exist; WhatsApp is testing a payment service in India. Others, such as new shopping features on Instagram, were launched in San Jose. All this falls short of a full-blown business plan. But the contours of Mr Zuckerberg’s vision are taking shape. The 34-year-old is proceeding more cautiously than in Facebook’s early years, when he was guided by the now infamous injunction to “move fast and break things”—but no less deliberately.

新平臺的一些元素已經(jīng)存在;WhatsApp正在印度測試一項支付服務(wù)。其他一些功能，比如Instagram上的新購物功能，則是在圣何塞推出的。所有這些都不足以形成一個完整的商業(yè)計劃。但扎克伯格的愿景輪廓正在成形?，F(xiàn)年34歲的扎克伯格比Facebook成立之初更加謹(jǐn)慎，當(dāng)時他受到了如今臭名昭著的“快速行動，打破陳規(guī)”的指導(dǎo)——但依舊是很謹(jǐn)慎。

詞匯

Contours/輪廓

no less /仍然；不相上下；依舊

deliberately/故意地；謹(jǐn)慎地；慎重地

That is just as well, for “platform shifts” are tricky. Microsoft did not see smartphones coming and Facebook itself almost missed the rise of mobile apps. To succeed, it must clear a number of hurdles. The first is technical. Facebook wants an Instagram user to be able to send a note directly to a friend on WhatsApp. Creating a common phone book for these services, with a combined total of 2.7bn users and different source codes, presents a knotty problem for programmers. Chris Cox, one of Mr Zuckerberg’s top lieutenants, is rumoured to have left the company in March because he did not think it could be done (this week Mr Cox attributed his departure to “artistic differences” with his boss).

這也無妨，因為“平臺轉(zhuǎn)移”是棘手的。微軟沒有預(yù)見到智能手機的到來，F(xiàn)acebook自己也幾乎錯過了移動應(yīng)用的崛起。要想成功，它必須掃清一些障礙。第一個是技術(shù)上的。Facebook希望Instagram用戶能夠直接向WhatsApp上的朋友發(fā)送短信。為這些服務(wù)創(chuàng)建一個共有27億用戶和不同源代碼的公用電話簿，對程序員來說是一個棘手的問題。有傳言稱，扎克伯格的高級助手之一克里斯?考克斯(Chris Cox)已于今年3月離開facebook，因為他認(rèn)為這是不可能的(本周，考克斯將他的離開歸因于與老板的“藝術(shù)差異”)。

The second challenge is economic. WeChat could become the platform of choice on smartphones because China had no dominant app stores. Facebook must contend with incumbents such as Apple and Google. Since you can’t sell microtargeted adverts against encrypted messages your algorithms cannot see, the new platform will need a fresh way to make money. For all its ubiquity, WeChat is no cash cow (Tencent, its owner, makes most of its revenue from online games). Maintaining Facebook’s fat margins would require new revenue sources, such as charging businesses to contact users or taking a cut of any purchases, as credit-card issuers do.

第二個挑戰(zhàn)是經(jīng)濟。微信可能成為智能手機的首選平臺，因為中國沒有占據(jù)主導(dǎo)地位的應(yīng)用商店。Facebook必須與蘋果(Apple)和谷歌等現(xiàn)有公司競爭。由于你無法推廣針對算法無法看到的加密信息而推算出的導(dǎo)向型廣告，新平臺將需要一種新的賺錢方式。盡管微信無處不在，但它并不是搖錢樹(其所有者騰訊的大部分收入來自網(wǎng)絡(luò)游戲)。維持Facebook的高利潤率需要新的收入來源，比如向聯(lián)系用戶的企業(yè)收取費用，或者像信用卡發(fā)行商那樣從任何購買行為中抽取一定油水。

詞匯

Incumbent/在職者；現(xiàn)任者；領(lǐng)圣俸者

?

Lastly, there are the entwined issues of privacy and competition. Mr Zuckerberg accepts that a lot of people dismiss Facebook’s sincerity here—his recent article in the?Washington Post, imploring governments to regulate social media, notwithstanding. It will continue to collect plenty of data. Integrating these, and the underlying apps, could in turn enable Facebook to convert its dominance in public social networking into power over private messaging. This reminds seasoned competition regulators of Microsoft’s attempts to bundle its operating system with a web browser in the mid-1990s in a bid to control cyberspace. With the internet’s rise, the stakes today are bigger: no country wants one firm to become society’s de facto operating system.

最后，還有隱私和競爭這兩個相互交織的問題。扎克伯格承認(rèn)，很多人對Facebook的誠意不屑一顧——盡管他最近在《華盛頓郵報》上發(fā)表了一篇文章，呼吁政府監(jiān)管社交媒體。它將繼續(xù)收集大量數(shù)據(jù)。整合這些應(yīng)用程序和底層應(yīng)用程序，可以反過來讓Facebook將其在公共社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)領(lǐng)域的主導(dǎo)地位轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)閷λ饺诵畔⒌目刂?。這讓經(jīng)驗豐富的競爭監(jiān)管機構(gòu)想起，上世紀(jì)90年代中期，微軟曾試圖將其操作系統(tǒng)與網(wǎng)絡(luò)瀏覽器捆綁銷售，以求控制網(wǎng)絡(luò)空間。隨著互聯(lián)網(wǎng)的崛起，如今的風(fēng)險更大:沒有哪個國家希望一家公司成為社會事實上的操作系統(tǒng)。

詞匯

Entwined/纏?。槐P繞

Implore/懇求

Notwithstanding/盡管，雖然

Bundle/捆

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Since its services cost nothing, Facebook says, it is not gouging users. It could argue that a single dominant social network is easier to police than lots of smaller ones and has greater financial and technical capacity to keep users safe from harmful content. And it would be a bulwark against WeChat, which might otherwise become a force outside China—bringing the Chinese surveillance state with it.

Facebook說，由于它的服務(wù)不收費，所以它沒有欺騙用戶。它可能會辯稱，一個占主導(dǎo)地位的社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)比許多規(guī)模較小的社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)更容易被監(jiān)管，而且擁有更大的財力和技術(shù)能力來保護用戶免受有害內(nèi)容的侵害。它將成為對抗微信的堡壘，否則——————。

詞匯

Gouge/亂要價

Bulwark/壁壘；保障；防波堤

surveillance /監(jiān)督；監(jiān)視

Indeed, Mr Zuckerberg’s?Washington Post?article looks like a bid to broker a 21st-century version of the Kingsbury Commitment of 1913, when?AT&T, then America’s telephone monopoly, accepted government oversight and agreed to spin off some of its businesses in exchange for not being nationalised or broken up. The difference is that, unlike?AT&T, Facebook’s reach extends beyond America and spans a growing range of industries, from advertising to finance. It must grapple with politicians, regulators and rivals. If enough opponents gang up at once, even the most gifted aikido master may struggle to fend them off.

的確，扎克伯格在《華盛頓郵報》上發(fā)表的文章，看起來像是在為21世紀(jì)版的金斯伯里承諾做中間人。1913年，時任美國電話壟斷企業(yè)的美國電話電報公司(AT&T)接受了政府的監(jiān)督，同意剝離部分業(yè)務(wù)，以換取不被國有化或分拆。不同之處在于，與AT&T不同的是，F(xiàn)acebook的業(yè)務(wù)范圍不僅限于美國，而且涵蓋了從廣告到金融等越來越多的行業(yè)。它必須與政界人士、監(jiān)管機構(gòu)和競爭對手競爭。如果有足夠多的對手聯(lián)合起來，即使是最有天賦的合氣道大師也可能難以抵擋他們。

詞匯

spin off /甩掉；剝離

grapple with/扭打；努力克服