????扎克伯格只是在向投資者們解釋理想主義的重要性。可結果，他卻像是一個聰明的書呆子在用居高臨下的語氣向約會對象嘮叨，他通常只會和喜歡電腦的女孩約會。接著，他又用四年級小學生就能理解的大白話，繼續解釋電腦的重要性。

????扎克伯格寫道：“我們希望增強人們之間的聯系。”但只要上過網的人都知道，雖然Facebook大幅度提高了朋友間聯系的頻率，但代價卻是降低了交流的質量。Facebook上的更新、聊天和照片充其量也就是為人們交流現實生活中有意義的活動提供了一個在線場所而已。

????他繼續寫道：“我們并非為了賺錢而提供服務，而是為了提供服務去賺錢。”鑒于Facebook最大的成功在于挖掘用戶數據，幫助廣告商有的放矢地投放廣告，并引導用戶像對待朋友一樣對待企業品牌，因此，這樣的話顯然不夠坦誠。扎克伯格的信共有83個句子，其中有41次提到“人們”，7次提到“商業”，但卻僅有一次提到廣告——而這才是網站架構的核心所在。

????而且，被扎克伯格上升為Facebook使命的一系列理念——開放的世界、負責任的政府、促進人們之間的聯系、黑客文化等，其實并非Facebook的專利，而是整個互聯網共同的理念。自從互聯網誕生以來，這些理念便是互聯網的一部分。Facebook能夠接納這些理念值得稱贊；然而，刨除這些一般性的理念來看Facebook，其實它就是一家極為擅長通過在線廣告盈利的公司而已。

????所以，扎克伯格的行文或許比佩奇、布林和梅森更加出眾，但同時也最為空洞，毫無意義。與谷歌和Groupon一樣，Facebook最初堅守理想主義，但面對金融市場的殘酷現實，最終這種信念也將土崩瓦解。唯一的區別在于，Facebook在上市之前便早已在現實面前舉起了白旗。

????譯者：阿龍/汪皓

????Zuckerberg is simply trying to explain to investors why idealism is important. But he ends up taking the patronizing tone of a brilliant geek telling his date he usually doesn't date girls who don't like computers, so he's going to explain -- in language a fourth-grader could understand -- why they're so important.

????"We hope to strengthen how people relate to each other," Zuckerberg wrote. But anyone who has spent time on the site knows that, while Facebook is very good at improving the quantity of friend connections, this comes at the cost of the quality of the interactions. Updates, chats and photos on Facebook are at best placeholders for the meaningful interactions that happen away from the site.

????He continues: "We don't build services to make money; we make money to build better services." This also seems disingenuous considering that Facebook's biggest triumph is to help advertisers by mining user data to target ads and to train them to treat corporate brands like friends. Zuckerberg's letter mentions the word "people" 41 times in 83 sentences. "Business" is mentioned seven times. Advertising, the real mission that the site is structured around, only once.

????The ideals Zuckerberg so nobly expounds as Facebook's mission -- an open world, accountable governments, connecting people, the Hacker Way -- belong not just to Facebook, but to the web itself. They have been a part of the Internet from its earliest days. It's nice that Facebook embraces them too, but take out these generic ideals and you are left with a company that is devilishly good at making money from online ads.

????So while Zuckerberg's founder's letter may be better written than those of Page, Brin and Mason, it's also the most hollow of meaning. Like Google and Groupon, Facebook started with an idealism that, confronted with the realities of financial markets, collapses in time. The only difference is, with Facebook, this capitulation happened long before it went public.