媒體與Facebook 是否爲與虎謀皮

As has been rumored for some time, Facebook launched a trial project called “Instant Articles” on Wednesday morning—a partnership with nine news organizations, including The New York Times, The Guardian, BuzzFeed,and National Geographic. Under the terms of the deal, entire news stories from those partners will appear insideFacebook’s mobile app and be able to be read there, as opposed to the traditional practice of news publishers posting an excerpt and a link to their website.

正如此前傳聞的一樣，Facebook於上週三上午正式推出一個名叫“Instant Articles”（意爲“即時文章”）的試驗項目。該項目是Facebook聯合《紐約時報》、《衛報》、BuzzFeed網站和《國家地理雜誌》等媒體共同推出的。根據協議，這些合作媒體的文章將全文出現在Facebook的移動應用內，也就是說，用戶可以在Facebook上直接閱讀全文，而不是像以往一樣只能閱讀摘要，或通過一個鏈接轉到原網頁。

At first blush, this sounds like a pretty straightforward exchange of value. Facebook gets what will hopefully be engaging content for its 1.4 billion or so users, and publishers get the reach that the social network provides—plus keep any revenue from advertising that they sell around that content. (if Facebook sells the ads, then publishers reportedly get to keep 70% of the proceeds.) So everybody wins, right?

乍一看，這個項目顯然是一次直白的價值交換。Facebook爲它的14億用戶爭取到了高質量的內容，出版商們也通過Facebook獲得了大量受衆——另外他們還能從Facebook基於相關內容獲得的廣告收入分成。（據報道，如果Facebook圍繞相關內容銷售廣告的話，出版商可以獲得70%的廣告收入。）所以這是一次皆大歡喜的合作，對吧？

That’s certainly the way Facebook is trying to sell the partnership: as a mutual exchange of goods, driven by the company’s desire to help publishers make their articles look as good as possible and reach more readers. But whenever you have an entity with the size and power of Facebook, even the simplest of arrangements becomes fraught with peril, and this is no exception. Why? Because a single player holds all of the cards in this particular game.

這顯然就是Facebook用來吸引合作伙伴的套路——Facebook高風亮節地爲出版商提供了更多的讀者，同時雙方開開心心地交換了利益。但如果一個企業達到了Facebook這樣的規模和實力，哪怕是最簡單的安排也可能充滿潛在的危險，沒有例外。爲什麼呢？因爲在這場特殊的牌局中，所有的好牌都握在一個玩家的手裏。

And that player is Facebook, as Columbia University’s Emily Bell noted on Twitter:

正如哥倫比亞大學艾米利o貝爾在Twitter上指出的，這個“開掛”了的玩家就是Facebook。

Main problem for publishers + FB remains theoretical: can you both be journalistic + be part of a commercial power structure?

“出版商+Facebook”模式的主要問題是理論上的：你能否一邊做新聞，一邊成爲一個商業權力架構的組成部分？

— emily bell (@emilybell) May 13, 2015

— emily bell (@emilybell)，2015年5月13日。

The main reason why publishers like the Times have entered into this partnership in the first place is that they are falling behind when it comes to mobile. As technology analyst Ben Thompson points out, Facebook is quite right when it says that most news sites load too slowly and look terrible, rendering the ads on those pages largely useless. Facebook, however, understands mobile like no one else: everything loads faster, looks nicer and is more appealing to advertisers, in part because Facebook can do the kind of targeting that newspapers aren’t equipped to do.

像《紐約時報》這樣的出版商之所以要進行這樣的合作，首要原因是它們在移動領域大大滯後。科技分析師本o湯普森指出，Facebook有一句話說得很對：大多數新聞網站的載入速度過慢，網站本身也設計得一塌糊塗，這使得這些網頁上的大多數廣告百無一用。而Facebook對移動的理解是無人能比的，它的載入速度更快，界面看起來更舒服，也更吸引廣告商，這在某種程度上也是由於Facebook擁有報刊媒體普遍都不具備的市場定位能力。

This is what makes the social behemoth’s offer so appealing. Plus, publishers get to keep some or all of the ad revenue, and they also get data about what users are doing with their content, which is always useful.

這就是爲什麼Facebook拋出的橄欖枝如此吸引人。另外，出版商們不僅能保持部分乃至全部的廣告收入，還能從Facebook那裏獲得用戶對內容的反饋數據，這對出版商來說無疑也是非常有用的。

The part of this deal that makes it a classic Faustian bargain is that Facebook arguably gets more from the arrangement than publishers do. How could that be, when it is giving away all the revenue? Because Facebook doesn’t really care about the revenue from ads around news content (although I expect most partners will take the 70% deal, if not now then later, because Facebook is better at selling ads). What Facebook wants is to deepen and strengthen its hold on users.

此次合作之所以有那麼一絲浮士德式交易的味道，也是因爲Facebook從中撈取的好處要大於出版商。或許有人會問，既然Facebook把廣告收入都拱手讓人了，它還能獲得什麼好處？其實Facebook並不在乎圍繞這些新聞內容的廣告收入（不過我認爲大多數合作媒體只能獲得70%的廣告收入，因爲Facebook比它們更擅長銷售廣告）。Facebook的真正目標是深化和鞏固它對用戶羣的吸引力。

In that sense, news content is just a means to an end. And the risk is that if it stops being an effective means to that end, then Facebook will lose interest in promoting it. But in the meantime, Facebook will have solidified its status as the default place where millions or possibly even billions of people go to get their news. In other words, it will still own the land, and who farms which specific patch of that land is irrelevant.

就這個意義而言，新聞內容只是Facebook爲達成目標而採用的一個手段。蘊含的風險是，如果這種合作達不到預期效果，Facebook就會對它失去興趣，不願意再花大力氣推廣它。但與此同時，Facebook作爲幾百萬甚至幾十億網民看新聞的“默認客戶端”這一地位早已深入人心。換句話說，一旦Facebook成了“地主”，誰是給它耕地的“長工”已經不重要了。

One big reason why there is trepidation in news-publishing circles—New York magazine said there was “palpable anxiety” in the Times newsroom about the deal—is that we already know what happens when Facebook loses interest in something: it withers and dies. That’s what happened with the social games that companies like Zynga developed and promoted through Facebook, a multibillion-dollar business until it suddenly wasn’t. It’s also what happened with the “social reader” apps that publishers like The Guardian and The Washington Post came up with in 2012 at Facebook’s behest.

現在新聞出版界已經開始瀰漫恐慌的氣氛。《紐約雜誌》稱，走進《紐約時報》的辦公室，你就會感受到人們對這次合作的焦慮。因爲我們已經知道，當Facebook失去對某個事物的興趣時，它會面臨怎樣的後果——凋零和死亡。這樣的事情就曾經發生在Zynga等社交遊戲公司身上。Zynga的研發和推廣也離不開Facebook的大力推動，它一度也是一家市值幾十億美元的大公司，後來突然就跌下了神壇。2012年，在Facebook的建議下，《衛報》和《華盛頓郵報》等出版商也推出過一系列“社交閱讀應用”，現在它們也早已蹤跡難尋。

The similarities between those apps and the current “instant articles” arrangement are many. The apps allowed users to read entire articles inside an app within Facebook, and millions of readers signed up to do so. But then Facebook changed its algorithm so that these articles and apps didn’t show up as frequently, and readership plummeted overnight.

那些應用與如今的“instant articles”之間存在很多共同點。首先它們也允許用戶在Facebook的一個應用內閱讀新聞全文，也的確有幾百萬用戶註冊了相關應用。但後來Facebook改變了它的算法，這些文章和應用出現的頻率大大降低，讀者羣幾乎一夜之間就大大縮水。

The risk isn’t that an evil Facebook suddenly tries to destroy or pervert the causes of journalism, or goes to war against media entities (although the network’s relationship with news is troubled, as my colleague Erin Griffith points out, and censorship is not uncommon). The big risk is that Facebook plunders the relationship that news companies have—or should have—with their readers, and then destroys their business model almost accidentally, while it is in pursuit of other things. That’s the kind of thing that concerns Facebook-watchers like veteran journalist Dan Gillmor:

對於出版商來說，最大的風險並不是Facebook會故意摧毀或腐蝕新聞業的根基，或是向新聞媒體開戰（不過我的同事艾林o格里菲斯認爲，Facebook與新聞業關係緊張是事實，而Facebook對新聞進行審查的情況也並不鮮見）。最大的風險是，Facebook會搶走新聞媒體與讀者的關係，而當Facebook隨後轉頭追求其它東西時，它會在不經意間摧毀新聞公司的業務模式。這種可能令丹o吉爾摩等Facebook觀察家們深感擔憂。

Facebook “instant articles” will be good for a few media orgs in the short run. But journalism will be far worse off as a whole.

短期看來，Facebook的“instant articles”對於一些媒體公司是件好事。但作爲一個整體，新聞業所面臨的後果要壞得多。

— Dan Gillmor (@dangillmor) May 13, 2015

— Dan Gillmor (@dangillmor) ，2015年5月13日。

Thompson and others are right when they say that news companies don’t really have any choice but to play ball with Facebook, which is why this is actually much worsethan the classic Faustian bargain. As a result of their own incompetence and/or inflexibility, combined with the shifting sands of the digital-media market, they have lost their grip on the audience that both they and advertisers are trying to reach.

湯普森和很多觀察人士認爲，新聞界在這個問題上幾乎沒有選擇的權力，只能被迫與Facebook共舞。這也就是爲什麼此次合作比經典的“浮士德式交易”還要令人悲哀。由於新聞業自身的僵化無能，加上數字媒體市場的大浪淘沙，新聞業已經失去了他們對讀者的控制——儘管他們和廣告商都在不遺餘力地吸引讀者。

That’s why all the cards are in Facebook’s hands. It has the platform, it has the reach, it has the users and it has something to offer to advertisers that most news companies can’t hope to replicate. Publishers like The New York Times have websites that users spend less than 20 minutes on in the average month, apps that no one wants to pay for, and paywalls whose growth is flattening sharply. What does the future hold for them?

這就是爲什麼說所有的好牌都在Facebook手裏。它的平臺、勢力範圍、用戶羣以及對廣告商的吸引力，是大多數新聞公司根本無法複製的。即便像《紐約時報》這樣的媒體“大牛”，用戶每月平均花在它的網站上的時間還不到20分鐘，也沒人想要付費使用它的新聞應用，其付費牆收入的增長也在驟然變平。誰知道他們的未來在哪裏？

What the social network has to offer is unquestionably going to help any of those publishers who sign up (and that in turn will create an incentive for others to do so). The risk is that it will wind up helping Facebook more, and that eventually Facebook—a for-profit company that has shown no evidence that it actually understands or cares about “journalism” per se—will become the trusted source of news for millions of users, rather than the publications that produce content.

Facebook拋來的橄欖枝，無疑會對任何一家加盟的新聞公司都起到幫助作用（反過來也會刺激其他媒體公司繼續加盟）。風險則是Facebook將獲得更多的好處。要知道，Facebook是一家“一切向錢看”的公司，沒有任何證據表明它真正理解和在乎“新聞業”本身的意義。因此人們有理由懷疑，它是否是一個可信的新聞來源，至少它是否比發佈新聞內容的媒體本身更可信。

Do news consumers ultimately benefit from this deal?Clearly they do, or at least the ones who use Facebook do. And perhaps we shouldn’t shed too many tears for slow, lumbering, inefficient news providers who have failed to adapt. But what does a world in which Facebook essentially controls access to the news look like? We are about to find out.

新聞消費者是否能從此次合作中獲益呢？答案顯然是肯定的——至少對於Facebook的用戶來說。或許那些動作緩慢、低效、笨拙的新聞提供商也不值得我們爲之灑淚。那麼，一個由Facebook掌控新聞渠道的世界會是什麼樣子？且讓我們拭目以待。