用人工智能篩選“今日頭條”

Every day, in a former Beijing aeroplane factory that is now the headquarters of Jinri Toutiao, servers sort and tag some 200,000 articles and videos that the mobile app’s users will consume that day.

今日頭條的總部設在北京一座曾經的飛機制造廠裏，每天，這裏的服務器都要對約20萬條文章和視頻進行整理和貼標籤，供這個移動應用的用戶當天閱覽。

With nearly 600m users, five-year-old Toutiao has overtaken traditional and state-owned media to become a significant channel through which the world’s most populous country gets its news.

成立五年、擁有近6億用戶的今日頭條，已超越傳統和國有媒體，成爲世界人口第一大國獲取新聞的一條重要渠道。

Meaning “Today’s Headlines”, Jinri Toutiao is also one of China’s most valuable tech start-ups, valued at $11bn after its latest Series D funding round led by Sequoia Capital last month. That is more than 20 times its $500m valuation in 2014, sparking a debate over the worth of what is essentially a news aggregation app.

今日頭條也是目前中國估值最高的科技初創企業之一。在完成由紅杉資本(Sequoia Capital)領投的D輪融資後，其估值已達110億美元，較2014年5億美元的估值高出20餘倍，由此引發了一場圍繞本質上是一款新聞聚合應用的價值的辯論。

While Toutiao hosts content but does not produce it, it maintains it has a key selling point in its “intelligent news feed”, where artificial intelligence and machine learning software tailor content.

儘管今日頭條發佈內容，但並不生成內容。它堅稱自己有一個關鍵賣點：“智能新聞推送”，即由人工智能與機器學習軟件對內容進行個性化定製。

“We strive to become the information platform that knows each individual best,” Tina Zhao, vice-president, said in an interview. “No two users’ feed lists are alike.”

今日頭條高級副總裁趙添(Tina Zhao)在接受採訪時表示：“我們努力成爲最瞭解每一位用戶喜好的信息平臺。沒有兩位用戶的新聞列表是一樣的。”

It is betting that a personalised user experience will give it an edge over its competitors — the tech triumvirate of Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent.

今日頭條押注的是，個性化的用戶體驗將使其相對於競爭對手——科技三巨頭百度(Baidu)、阿里巴巴(Alibaba)和騰訊(Tencent)——擁有優勢。

“Back in the days when Toutiao was born, the Chinese information market was dominated by web portals like Sina and Sohu. Their mobile products were simply moving content from web to mobile, and user experience?.?.?.?was not good enough,” said Ms Zhao.

趙添表示：“今日頭條剛誕生時，中國的信息市場還是由新浪(Sina)和搜狐(Sohu)之類的門戶網站把持着。他們的移動產品僅僅是把內容從網絡端挪到移動端，用戶體驗……並不太好。”

Founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming, a former software engineer, Toutiao has grown rapidly in the past year. Its number of daily active users rose from 30m to 78m in 2016 — making it the tenth most-used app in China — as it capitalised on voracious demand for interesting content, in a country still dominated by state-owned media.

今日頭條是2012年由前軟件工程師張一鳴創建的。過去一年裏，公司發展迅速。日活用戶數從3000萬增至2016年的7800萬，在中國熱門應用中排名第10。在中國這個仍由官方媒體主導的國家，人們對於有趣的內容有着旺盛需求，今日頭條利用了這一點。

“We are not like other news portals which provide news with a certain position. Rather, we are a neutral platform, providing news to every person depending on what they are interested in,” said Mr Zhang, in a 2015 interview with Chinese media.

張一鳴在2015年接受中國媒體採訪時曾表示：“我們和其他帶有一定立場提供內容的新聞門戶網站不一樣。我們是一箇中立的平臺，根據每個人的興趣來提供新聞。”

Toutiao’s readers can browse Chinese-language news, commentary and video sourced from 4,000 partnerships, which the company says it has forged with both state-owned and independent media organisations, including Xinhua and Caixin.

今日頭條的中文新聞、評論和視頻來自4000家合作伙伴。據該公司稱，這些合作伙伴既有國有媒體，也有獨立媒體，例如新華社和財新。

Sina Weibo, one of China’s largest social media platforms, invested $100m in Toutiao in 2014 and now publishes non-news content by verified bloggers directly to Toutiao’s app.

2014年，中國最大的社交媒體平臺新浪微博向今日頭條投資1億美元，如今，可直接在今日頭條應用上發佈來自微博認證博主的非新聞內容。

To beef up its news-sorting algorithms, Toutiao has aggressively poached engineering talent. In February, it hired Ma Wei-Ying, the former assistant managing director of Microsoft Research Asia, to lead its AI Lab.

爲了增強自己的新聞排序算法，今日頭條一直在積極挖技術人才。今年2月，微軟亞洲研究院(Microsoft Research Asia)常務副院長馬維英加盟今日頭條，執掌其人工智能實驗室。

Yet some of Toutiao’s investors have expressed concern over how solely providing content can sustain long-term growth.

但對於僅憑提供內容如何能維持長期增長，今日頭條的一些投資者表示了擔憂。

“We are still undecided about ‘new media’ firms. They build audience and popularity through third-party mega-platforms but are not really building something on their own. They are dependent on the mega-platform,” said Anita Huang, a managing partner at Beijing-based Sinovation Ventures.

總部位於北京的創新工場(Sinovation Ventures)運營合夥人黃蕙雯(Anita Huang)表示：“對於‘新媒體’公司我們仍有些猶豫。這些公司通過第三方大平臺來構建受衆和人氣，但並不是真正靠自己。他們依賴大平臺。”

Nearly all of Toutiao’s revenue comes from advertising. The company said it earned Rmb6bn ($869m) last year from in-app advertisements and aims to increase that to Rmb10bn by 2020.

今日頭條几乎全部營收都來自廣告。該公司稱，去年通過應用內廣告創收60億元人民幣（合8.69億美元），力求到2020年提升至100億元人民幣。

“The value of Toutiao is indeed overestimated for a platform without original content,” wrote Zhang Luoyang, a prominent online tech commentator. “Toutiao’s 600m user base has pretty much found all of China’s 680m internet users. To make only Rmb6bn in advertisements, despite having so many users, means its margins are extremely low and dependent on one source, so it must create more value within its own services.”

知名在線科技評論員張洛陽撰文表示，“作爲一個沒有原創內容的平臺，今日頭條確實被高估了。今日頭條6億用戶已逼近中國6.8億網民的總量。如此多用戶只貢獻了60億元人民幣的廣告費，說明其利潤率極低，且創收來源單一。因此，它必須挖掘自己的服務，創造更多價值。”

That has prompted Toutiao to seek additional sources of revenue abroad and to explore other service areas.

這促使今日頭條去海外尋找其他營收渠道，並開發其他服務領域。

In February, it bought Los Angeles-based video app Flipagram, an Instagram rival, for an undisclosed amount, and has taken controlling stakes in several Indonesian and Indian media apps. A partnership with Chinese ecommerce platform enables users to browse and purchase directly products featured within the Toutiao app.

今年2月，今日頭條收購了Instagram的競爭對手、總部位於洛杉磯的視頻應用Flipagram（收購金額未對外披露），還買下數款印尼和印度媒體應用的控股股份。此外，公司還與中國電商平臺京東()進行合作，讓用戶可直接在今日頭條應用裏瀏覽併購買京東商品。

Toutiao also has made a big push into hosting user-created content. Last year, it said it would invest $1bn in video streaming and now allows anyone to set up a channel on Toutiao to post non-news content.

今日頭條還開始大舉發力用戶原創內容領域。去年，該公司稱將向視頻流業務投資10億美元。現在任何人都可以在今日頭條上開設頻道，發佈非新聞內容。

Meanwhile, media professionals and investors worry that Toutiao could encounter the problems of algorithm bias and fake news that have entangled social media platforms such as Facebook. Toutiao employs “human intelligence” teams to screen for dubious content and refine its algorithms but analysts say a personalised news source runs the danger of becoming too narrow.

與此同時，媒體專業人士和投資者擔心，今日頭條會遇到一直困擾着Facebook等社交媒體平臺的算法偏差和假新聞等問題。今日頭條組建了多個“人類智能”團隊來篩查可疑內容，並改進算法，但分析師們表示，個性化新聞存在着新聞來源變得太窄的風險。

Lou Meijing, an analyst at iiMedia, a Beijing media consultancy group, said: “There is this problem of creating a filter bubble from a news source based on an algorithm and what our friends recommend, so that what we read further creates an even more subjective, more biased stream of information.”

北京媒體諮詢集團艾媒網(iiMedia)分析師婁梅靜表示：“要當心一個問題，這種基於算法和朋友推薦的新聞來源會形成一個‘過濾泡沫’，我們的閱讀歷史會導致推送的信息更加主觀、更有偏見。”