臉書熱潮退燒力保優勢----中壢英文補習班－金學堂英語的部落格

【聯合報╱陳世欽譯）】

Facebook Maneuvers To Keep Its Cachet

This article is by Jenna Worth man, Vindu Goel and Nicole Per loth. When Evan Spiegel looked into the future for his company, Snapchat, he did not see Facebook. He saw something else, something much bigger — a social network that could exist on its own, outside Facebook.

Facebook is still the dominant social media service, and has been an attractive suitor for many start-ups. And Snapchat most likely spurned Facebook partly because it thought it could fetch much more than the billions Facebook was willing to pay.

But the snub also foreshadows a possible future where Facebook is no longer the default place on the web where people go to network. The swift rise of upstarts like Snapchat in a shifting social media landscape suggests a change in how and where people like to spend their time.

The rebuff also reveals a changing perception of Facebook in the tech industry. As the once scrappy start-up evolves into a sprawling corporation, younger companies who view themselves as disruptive do not find Facebook’s size as appealing. Not to mention that a lot of them are trying to provide alternatives to Facebook.

Despite the site’s primacy in the social media market, some numbers suggest that Facebook addiction has given way to Facebook fatigue, at least among some users. A study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that the majority of users have at one point or another taken a multiweek break from the service, citing the tedium and irrelevancy of its content. Among the crucial younger demographic — users ages 18 to 29 — that first propelled Facebook into prominence, 38 percent said they expected to spend less time using the site this year.

That fatigue may also have started to trickle down to the developers who build apps on top of Facebook’s platform.

The company’s business depends on the working relationships with those developers. In its early years, Facebook carefully courted app developers like game makers, including Zynga. But it later changed its rules to make it harder for apps to go viral. More recently, though, it has been trying to lure developers back with more favorable terms.

For any company as large as Facebook, finding new sources of growth is a challenge. Executives there have used acquisitions to help promote growth. Being able to identify potential targets is important for its continued success.

Facebook has had a sharp eye for emerging companies that have succeeded in areas it is eager to enter, like Instagram, the photo-sharing app it bought in 2012 for about $1 billion. The service, which had 30 million users at the time, now has more than 150 million, and recently, the first ads began appearing in users’ photo streams.

The two companies were a good fit, but Facebook’s compatibility with Snapchat was unclear. Snapchat, a mobile messaging application, is centered on impermanence and offers privacy.

Facebook pushes users to share more. The Snapchat bid looks like an attempt by Facebook to get back some of the hip factor. Now with younger users preferring Snapchat — which says it processes nearly as many photos as Facebook each day — Snapchat may well have the upper hand.

Christopher Poole, 25, the founder of 4chan, the message board, said Facebook’s aggressive pursuit of Snapchat may point to an identity crisis of sorts.

“Does that mean that they’re willing to embrace an alternative to Facebook identity, or does it mean that they feel that threatened by it that they’d leave their own wheelhouse?” he said.

中譯

史畢吉爾為他的公司Snapchat展望未來時，出現在他眼裡的並不是微網誌臉書。

他看到別的東西：大了許多的東西：可在臉書以外自行生存的社群網絡。

臉書至今仍然稱霸社群媒體服務業，而且對許多新創公司而言是深具魅力的追求者。Snapchat拒絕臉書的最可能原因，多少跟自忖比臉書願付的數十億美元價碼更值錢有關。

然而Snapchat把臉書拒於門外也預示臉書未來可能不再是人們上網後的首選。Snapchat之類後起之秀在不斷變化的社群媒體領域迅速崛起，意味人們安排休閒時間的方式與地點已經改變。

此事還顯示，科技業對臉書的觀感也在改變。臉書曾經是個充滿鬥志的新創公司，如今已變成觸角無遠弗屆的龐然大物。然而這些以顛覆者自居的年輕公司認為臉書的規模不具吸引力，遑論許多新公司還試圖為人們提供臉書之外的替代選擇。

雖然臉書仍為社群媒體龍頭，有些數字卻顯示人們對它的癮正為疲乏（倦怠）所取代，至少部分使用者是如此。丕優網路與美國生命計畫調查發現，多數的臉書使用者曾經數星期不使用它，內容單調與無關是原因。關鍵的較年輕使用者（介於18到29歲）當初把臉書推上頂峰，如今卻有38%表示預期今年花在臉書上的時間會減少。

這種倦怠可能也已經開始蔓延到在臉書平台上設計應用軟體的開發商身上。

臉書經營有賴與這些開發商維持良好工作關係。臉書發展初期小心翼翼討好包括Zynga等遊戲開發商在內的軟體開發商，後來改變了規則，使應用軟體比較難網路爆紅。最近，它試圖以更有利的條件誘使開發商回頭。

對每個規模大如臉書的公司來說，如何找到促進成長的新途徑都是挑戰。臉書高層曾經以併購為促進公司成長的手段。要想歷久而不衰，如何找出潛在目標是重要關鍵。

臉書曾以銳利眼光在它急於打入的領域裡鎖定成功的新興公司，如2012年以大約10億美元買下的照片分享應用軟體Instagram。Instagram當時有3000萬使用者，現已超過1.5億。最近，第一批廣告開始出現在用戶的照片串流中。

臉書與Instagram是不錯的搭配，與Snapchat能否相容卻不確定。Snapchat是行動訊息軟體，主要著重於短暫性，而且能保護隱私。