Facebook或將直接發佈新聞內容

Nothing attracts news organizations like Facebook. And nothing makes them more nervous.

沒有像Facebook那樣吸引新聞機構的東西了。也沒有什麼東西能讓新聞機構更緊張。

With 1.4 billion users, the social media site has become a vital source of traffic for publishers looking to reach an increasingly fragmented audience glued to smartphones. In recent months, Facebook has been quietly holding talks with at least half a dozen media companies about hosting their content inside Facebook rather than making users tap a link to go to an external site.

這個擁有14億用戶的社交媒體網站，對希望吸引整天盯着手機屏幕、越來越分心的受衆的出版商來說，已成爲一個流量的重要來源。近幾個月來，Facebook已與至少六家媒體公司悄悄進行談判，談關於用Facebook內部的主機來託管媒體公司內容的合作，從而無需讓用戶通過點擊鏈接進入外部的網站。

Such a plan would represent a leap of faith for news organizations accustomed to keeping their readers within their own ecosystems, as well as accumulating valuable data on them. Facebook has been trying to allay their fears, according to several of the people briefed on the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were bound by nondisclosure agreements.

這個計劃將對習慣於將讀者留在自己的生態系統裏、同時對其收集有價值數據的新聞機構來說，是個一百八十度的大轉彎。據幾位瞭解談判的人說，Facebook一直在試圖消除新聞機構的擔心，這些人要求不具名，因爲他們簽了保密協議。

Facebook intends to begin testing the new format in the next several months, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions. The initial partners are expected to be The New York Times, BuzzFeed and National Geographic, although others may be added since discussions are continuing. The Times and Facebook are moving closer to a firm deal, one person said.

據兩位瞭解談判情況的人說，Facebook計劃在未來幾個月開始測試這種新方式。最初的合作伙伴預計將包括《紐約時報》、BuzzFeed，以及《國家地理》(National Geographic)雜誌，但其他公司可能也會加入進來，因爲討論仍在繼續。有一位人士表示，時報與Facebook正在接近達成一項協議。

To make the proposal more appealing to publishers, Facebook has discussed ways for publishers to make money from advertising that would run alongside the content.

爲了讓提議對出版商更具吸引力，Facebook提出了幾種讓出版商能用與內容同時運行的廣告賺錢的方法。

Facebook has said publicly that it wants to make the experience of consuming content online more seamless. News articles on Facebook are currently linked to the publisher’s own website, and open in a web browser, typically taking about eight seconds to load. Facebook thinks that this is too much time, especially on a mobile device, and that when it comes to catching the roving eyeballs of readers, milliseconds matter.

Facebook曾公開表示，希望能把用戶在網上消費內容的體驗變得更流暢。Facebook上的新聞文章目前是鏈接到出版商自己的網站上的，並在單獨的瀏覽器面頁中打開，內容加載通常需大約八秒鐘。Facebook認爲這個時間太長了，尤其是在移動設備上，考慮到這涉及捕捉讀者不斷移動的眼球，毫秒的時間都很重要。

In addition to hosting content directly on Facebook, the company is talking with publishers about other technical ways to hasten delivery of their articles.

除了把內容直接託管到Facebook上，該公司也在與出版商談關於讓其內容更快加載的其他技術手段。

Even marginal increases in the speed of a site, said Edward Kim, chief executive of the analytics and distribution company SimpleReach, generally mean big increases in user satisfaction and traffic. So it is likely, he said, that Facebook’s plan focuses on those small improvements, rather than on getting money from deals with media companies.

分析發行流量的公司SimpleReach的首席執行官愛德華·金(Edward Kim)表示，即使是網站速度微不足道的增加，通常也意味着用戶滿意程度和流量的大增。所以，他說，Facebook的計劃很可能側重的是這些小的改進，而不是通過與媒體公司達成協議賺錢。

“But there are a lot of implications for publishers,” he added. “It really comes down to how Facebook structures this, and how they can ensure this is a win on both sides.”

“但這對出版商來說也有不少影響，”他補充說。“這歸根結底取決於Facebook將如何實現，取決於他們怎麼保證這對雙方來說是互利互惠的。”

The issue is also pressing, he said, because some media companies have seen a drop in traffic from Facebook that could be attributed to the company’s prioritizing of video — a much more lucrative medium for ad sales.

他說，這個問題也具有急迫感，因爲有些媒體公司已經看到來自Facebook的流量有所下降，可能是由於Facebook在重點發展視頻內容，視頻是更有利可圖的廣告銷售渠道。

Video has become increasingly popular with Facebook users and advertisers, and at its developer conference that begins on Wednesday, the company is expected to introduce expanded tools to place video ads inside non-Facebook applications.

視頻已經成爲越來越受Facebook用戶和廣告客戶歡迎的內容。在週三開始的Facebook開發者大會上，公司有望推出把視頻廣告加到非Facebook應用中的擴展工具。

Like Facebook, media companies also want improved user experiences. Still, they are treading carefully. While BuzzFeed has an overt policy of spreading its content outside of its own site, The Times uses a subscription model that provides a growing portion of the company’s revenue. It would have to weigh the benefits of reaching Facebook’s users — and the ad revenue that comes with them — against the prospect of giving away its content and losing the clicks on its own site that would instead stay within Facebook.

與Facebook一樣，媒體公司也希望改進用戶體驗。儘管如此，他們在這件事上很小心翼翼。雖然BuzzFeed的公開政策，是讓其網站上的內容流傳到公司網站之外，但時報採用的是訂閱模式，這種模式正爲公司的營收提供日益增長的部分。時報不得不權衡得到Facebook用戶所帶來的好處、及其所附帶的廣告收入，因爲這種做法涉及到免費提供自己的內容，失去自己網站點擊數，讓Facebook得到這些點擊數的前景。

Some news organizations have reacted coolly to the proposal. Several employees of The Guardian, for example, have informally suggested to colleagues at other publications that publishers should band together to negotiate deals that work for the whole industry, and should retain control of their own advertising, whether content is hosted on Facebook or not, a person with knowledge of the discussions said.

有些新聞機構對Facebook的建議反應冷淡。比如，一位瞭解有關討論的人表示，《衛報》(The Guardian)的幾名員工已向在其他出版物工作的同事發出非正式建議，出版商應聯合起來進行談判，以達成對整個行業可行的協議，並應保留對自己做廣告的控制權，不管出版商的內容是否託管在Facebook網站上。

Representatives for The Times and BuzzFeed declined to comment on Monday. The Guardian and National Geographic did not immediately respond to questions about talks with Facebook.

時報和BuzzFeed的代表週一婉言拒絕發表評論。《衛報》和《國家地理》沒有馬上回復有關與Facebook談判的提問。

The Huffington Post and the business and economics website Quartz were also approached. Both also declined to discuss their involvement.

Facebook與《赫芬頓郵報》(Huffington Post)以及商業和經濟網站Quartz也有接觸。這兩家也婉言拒絕討論他們的參與。

Facebook declined to comment on its specific discussions with publishers. But the company noted that it had provided features to help publishers get better traction on Facebook, including tools unveiled in December that let them target their articles to specific groups of Facebook users, such as young women living in New York who like to travel.

Facebook婉言拒絕就其與出版商的具體討論發表評論。但公司指出，它已經爲出版商提供某些功能，幫助他們在Facebook上吸引更多的讀者，這些功能包括去年12月發佈的、讓出版商能向特定的Facebook用戶羣提供內容的工具，比如住在紐約、喜歡旅遊的年輕女性們。

The company recognizes that the new plan, championed by Chris Cox, the top lieutenant to Facebook’s chief, Mark Zuckerberg, on product matters, would remove the usual ads that publishers place around their content. Although the revenue-sharing ideas are still in flux, one would allow publishers to show a single ad in a custom format within each Facebook article, according to one person with knowledge of the discussions.

公司認識到，由Facebook首席執行官馬克·扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)的高級副手克里斯·考克斯(Chris Cox)倡導的有關產品問題的新計劃，將消除出版商通常安排的與其內容同時出現的廣告。雖然共享收入的方法仍在不斷變化，但據一位瞭解討論的人說，其中一個可能是允許出版商在每篇Facebook文章中，用自定格式顯示一個廣告。

Facebook has not historically done any kind of revenue-sharing with content publishers. Essentially, its position has been “Put your content on Facebook and we’ll send you traffic.” But lately Facebook has been experimenting with revenue-sharing options. In December, it began showing N.F.L. clips sponsored by Verizon. Verizon paid for the clips to be sent to people’s news feeds and ran an ad at the end of them. The N.F.L. and Facebook split the revenue.

Facebook有史以來從未與內容出版商有過任何形式的收入共享。它的立場基本上一直是，“把你的內容放在Facebook上，我們向你提供流量。”但Facebook最近一直在探索收入共享的可能性。去年12月，它開始播放由Verizon贊助的NFL視頻片段。Verizon公司出錢把視頻發送到人們的新聞訂閱中，然後在視頻結尾處放段廣告。收入由NFL與Facebook分成。

The new proposal by Facebook carries another risk for publishers: the loss of valuable consumer data. When readers click on an article, an array of tracking tools allow the host site to collect valuable information on who they are, how often they visit and what else they have done on the web.

Facebook的新方案給出版商帶來另一種風險：失去有價值的消費者數據。當讀者點擊一篇文章時，一系列的跟蹤工具讓網站主機能夠收集有價值的信息，比如讀者是誰，他們訪問網站的頻率，他們在網站上還做了什麼等等。

That data might instead go to Facebook, which like many companies uses that information itself to target and track consumers more effectively for advertisers (and which has been subject to criticisms over its privacy policies). It has not been disclosed how much of that data Facebook would be willing to share.

這些數據也許會被Facebook得到，與許多公司使用這類信息的公司一樣，Facebook自己將能幫助廣告商更有效地針對及跟蹤消費者（Facebook的隱私政策一直受到人們的批評）。Facebook公司還沒有透露會願意分享多少這類數據。

And if Facebook pushes beyond the experimental stage and makes content hosted on the site commonplace, those who do not participate in the program could lose substantial traffic — a factor that has played into the thinking of some publishers. Their articles might load more slowly than their competitors’, and over time readers might avoid those sites.

如果Facebook將試驗項目進一步推廣，讓使用其網站託管內容成爲司空見慣的事情，那麼，那些不參與該計劃公司可能會失去大量的流量，這在一些出版商的考慮中是一個因素。他們的內容可能比他們競爭對手的加載速度變慢，隨着時間的推移，讀者可能會避免這些慢的網站。

And just as Facebook has changed its news feed to automatically play videos hosted directly on the site, giving them an advantage compared with videos hosted on YouTube, it could change the feed to give priority to articles hosted directly on its site.

而且，正如Facebook已經改變了其新聞訂閱工具，讓託管在其網站的視頻能自動播放、使這些視頻與託管在YouTube上的視頻相比有了優勢一樣，Facebook也可能會修改新聞訂閱工具，讓直接託管在其網站上的文章有更高的優先級。

Over the long term, said Alan D. Mutter, a newspaper consultant who writes a blog called Reflections of a Newsosaur, all publishers are likely to have to allow their content to range more freely outside of their own sites.

爲報紙作諮詢的阿蘭·D·穆特(Alan D. Mutter)有一個名爲“新聞老古董的思考”(Reflections of a Newsosaur)的博客，他說，從長遠來看，所有的出版商都可能不得不讓其內容在自身網站以外的地方更自由地流動。

“But in the short term,” he said, “it’s a scary proposition because publishers want to control their brand, and their audience and their advertising dollars.”

“不過在短期內，這是件可怕的事情，因爲出版商想控制自己的品牌、自己的受衆，以及自己的廣告收入，”他說。

Facebook, on the other hand, he said, can only benefit from it. “It enhances user satisfaction, keeps users on its site and has better content which allows it to sell advertising at better rates,” Mr. Mutter said.

而從另一方面來看，Facebook只會從中受益，他說。“它增強了用戶的滿意程度，把用戶留在了自己的網站上，這就讓它能把廣告賣到更高的價錢，”穆特說。