Facebook想模仿微信,它做得到嗎?

SAN FRANCISCO — As Mark Zuckerberg begins shifting Facebook to private messaging and away from public sharing and open conversations, the vision he has sketched out for the future of social networking already exists — just not in the United States.

舊金山——馬克·扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)開始讓Facebook從公共分享和公開對話轉向私人信息，然而他為未來社交網絡所描繪的願景已經存在了——只不過不在美國。

Instead, it is a reality in China through a messaging app called WeChat.

它反而是由一個名叫微信的通訊應用程序在中國實現的。

Developed by the Chinese internet giant Tencent in 2011, WeChat lets people message each other via one-on-one texts, audio or video calls. Users can also form groups of as many as 500 people on WeChat to discuss and debate the issues of the day.

微信是中國互聯網巨頭騰訊於2011年開發的，它讓人們可以通過一對一的文本、音頻或視頻通話互相發送信息。用户還可以在微信上組成最多500人的小組，討論和辯論當天的話題。

While Facebook users constantly see ads in their News Feeds, WeChat users only see one or two ads a day in their Moment feeds. That’s because WeChat isn’t dependent on advertising for making money. It has a mobile payments system that has been widely adopted in China, which allows people to shop, play games, pay utility bills and order meal deliveries all from within the app. WeChat gets a commission from many of these services.

Facebook用户經常在他們的新聞源中看到廣告，而微信用户每天只會在他們的“發現”消息源中看到一兩個廣告。這是因為微信不依賴廣告賺錢。它的移動支付系統在中國得到了廣泛應用，人們可以在該應用內購物、玩遊戲、支付水電費和訂餐。微信從這些眾多的服務當中獲得佣金。

“WeChat has shown definitively that private messaging, especially the small groups, is the future,” said Jeffrey Towson, a professor of investment at Peking University. “It is the uber utility of business and life. It has shown the path.”

“微信明確地向人們展現出，私人信息是未來的趨勢，尤其是小羣體信息，”北京大學投資學教授陶迅(Jeffrey Towson)表示。“它是商業和生活的超級實用工具。它已經指明瞭道路。”

What is happening in China offers clues to not only how Facebook may carry out its shift, but how the internet more broadly might change. Many of Silicon Valley’s tech giants are dependent today on online advertising to make enough money to keep growing and innovating on new services. Some call online ads the lifeblood of the internet.

中國正在發生的事情不僅為Facebook轉型提供了線索，也為更廣泛的互聯網可能發生的變化提供了線索。如今，硅谷的許多科技巨頭都依賴在線廣告來賺足夠的錢，以保持在新服務領域的增長和創新。有些人把網絡廣告稱為互聯網的命脈。

But WeChat, which has 1.1 billion monthly active users, shows that other models — particularly those based on payments and commerce — can support massive digital businesses. That has implications for Google, Twitter and many others, as well as Facebook.

但每月活躍用户達11億的微信表明，其他模式——尤其是基於支付和商務的模式——可以支持大規模的數字業務。這對谷歌、Twitter和許多其他網站都有啟發，當然也有Facebook。

WeChat, of course, has its own flaws. The messaging app is heavily censored because of requirements by the Chinese government.

當然，微信也有自己的缺點。由於中國政府的要求，這款信息應用受到了嚴格的審查。

Facebook and Tencent did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Facebook和騰訊沒有立即迴應置評請求。

Mr. Zuckerberg didn’t elaborate much this week on how the change toward private messaging would affect Facebook’s business, which relies on people publicly sharing posts to be able to serve them targeted advertisements. In a blog post, he said Facebook would build more ways for people to interact on top of messaging, “including calls, video chats, groups, stories, businesses, payments, commerce, and ultimately a platform for many other kinds of private services.”

扎克伯格本週沒有詳細闡釋向私人信息服務的轉變將如何影響Facebook的業務，目前，它的業務依賴於按照用户公開分享的帖子，為他們提供定向廣告服務。他在一篇博客文章中説，Facebook將向人們提供更多方式，讓他們在信息傳送的基礎上進行互動，“包括電話、視頻聊天、羣組、故事、企業、支付、商業，最終還將成為許多其他私人服務的平台。”

Yet it’s unclear whether Mr. Zuckerberg can pull all those features off with Facebook. On WeChat, those services are underpinned by its mobile payments system, WeChat Pay. Because payments is already tied into the messaging service, people can easily order meal deliveries, book hotels, hail ride-sharing cars and pay their bills. WeChat Pay itself has 900 million monthly active users.

不過，目前還不清楚扎克伯格能否在Facebook上實現所有這些功能。在微信上，這些服務的基礎是其移動支付系統“微信支付”。由於支付同信息傳送服務捆綁在一起，人們可以輕鬆地訂購送餐服務、預訂酒店、叫車和支付賬單。微信支付本身每月有九億活躍用户。

People also use WeChat Pay to transfer money and to buy personal finance products. More than 100 million customers have purchased WeChat’s personal finance products, which managed over 500 billion yuan, or $74 billion, by the end of last September, Tencent has said. Its users can buy everything from bonds and insurance to money market funds through the app.

人們也使用微信支付轉賬和購買個人理財產品。騰訊表示，截至去年9月底，已有一億多客户購買了微信的個人理財產品，這些產品管理着超過5000億人民幣（合740億美元）的資金。用户可以通過該應用購買從債券、保險到貨幣市場基金在內的一切東西。

Facebook lacks such a payments system. So to be more like WeChat, the Silicon Valley company could have to acquire banking and payment licenses in many countries. One sign that Facebook has been thinking about payments is its work on a new crypto coin that is meant to let people send money to contacts on their messaging systems.

Facebook沒有這樣的支付系統。因此，為了更像微信，這家硅谷公司可能必須在許多國家獲取銀行和支付牌照。Facebook一直在考慮支付業務的一個跡象是，該公司正在研發一種新的加密貨幣，旨在讓人們可以將錢發送給他們消息系統中的聯繫人。

To make Facebook a private messaging product, Mr. Zuckerberg may have a lot else to learn from Allen Zhang, the creator of WeChat. Mr. Zhang is famous for his perfectionist pursuit of a well-designed service.

為把Facebook變成私人消息產品，扎克伯格可能還有很多其他方面要向微信創始人張小龍學習。張小龍以對精良服務設計的完美主義追求而著稱。

“He is renowned in China’s tech scene as an artist and philosopher, as well as for his fierce mission against anything that degrades user experience,” Connie Chan, an investor at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, recently wrote of Mr. Zhang.

“他在中國科技界的出名是作為一個藝術家和哲學家，還有他以抵制一切降低用户體驗的東西為己任，”風險投資公司安德森·霍洛維茨(Andreessen Horowitz)的投資人陳梅陵(Connie Chan)近期在關於張小龍的文章中寫道。

Mr. Zhang fought many internal battles when Tencent’s revenue department pushed to put more ads on WeChat. In a four-hour speech earlier this year, he pondered the question of why there were not more ads on the messaging service, especially the opening-page ads that are the norm in many other Chinese mobile apps.

當騰訊的營收部門催促着想要在微信上投放更多廣告時，張小龍在公司內部打了很多場仗。在今年年初四小時的演講中，他讓大家思考一個問題，為什麼這款消息平台上沒那麼多廣告，特別是啟動頁廣告，這在很多其他中國手機應用程序上是常態。

Mr. Zhang’s answer: Many Chinese spent a lot of time — about one third of their online time — on WeChat, he said. “If WeChat were a person, it would have to be your best friend so that you would be willing to spend so much time with it,” he said. “How could I post an ad on the face of your best friend? Every time you see it, you’ll have to watch an ad before you can talk to it.”

張小龍的答案是：很多中國人花大量時間——大約他們上網時間的三分之一——在微信上，他説。“如果微信是一個人，他是你最好的朋友，因為你在他那裏花最多的時間，”他説。“不希望你跟最好的朋友説話，先看他臉上的廣告，然後取下來再跟他説話。”

Mr. Zhang, who has made restraint his product philosophy, has been lucky because Tencent makes most of its money from online games so that it does not need to sell ads for revenue.

張小龍已將剋制作為他的產品哲學，他一直很幸運，因為騰訊大部分營利來自在線遊戲，所以不需要靠賣廣告賺錢。

Tencent doesn’t break out its revenues from WeChat, but its financial report for the third quarter of 2018 said that social advertising revenue, which includes WeChat, grew 61 percent from a year earlier, while the category called “other businesses,” which includes payment services, rose by 69 percent.

騰訊沒有公佈它的微信收入，但其2018年第三季度的財務報告稱，包括微信在內的社交廣告收入同比上漲了61%，而包括支付服務的名為“其他業務”的類別則增長了69%。

Mr. Zuckerberg does not have that luxury, given that he is trying to switch from an ad-based business into a different model. It will be far from an easy task to pull off.

扎克伯格可沒這樣的優勢，鑑於他正努力從基於廣告的業務轉向不同的模式。它實現起來將遠沒那麼容易。

“Zuck is clearly trying to address Facebook’s problems of privacy and fake news, but it will greatly affect its monetization capability,” said Ivy Li, a venture capitalist at Seven Seas Partners in Menlo Park, Calif. “How comprehensive the surgery is going to be and whether the implementation will be twisted by all kinds of compromises is a big question.”

“扎克伯格顯然在努力應對Facebook的隱私和假消息問題，但這將嚴重影響其盈利能力，”加州門洛帕克的七海資本(Seven Seas Partners)的風險投資人艾薇·李(Ivy Li)説。“這場變革會有多全面，執行上是否會因各種妥協而扭曲是個大問題。”

She added: “Facebook is trying to seek a balance between a public square and a private space in an increasingly polarizing society. The final result could be it will be abandoned by both.”

她還説：“Facebook正努力尋求在日趨兩極化的社會中，在公共平台與私人空間之間取得平衡。最終結果可能會是被兩者所拋棄。”