????試想一下，如果一項奧林匹克運動沒有任何通用的量化指標，那將會是什么樣子。成千上萬名極具競爭力的運動員奮勇爭先，但只能通過雞尾酒會上的喋喋不休和同行的補充意見來計分。過去幾個世紀的新聞界就是這樣。歡迎光臨。

????印刷時代，發行量充其量只能算是一個可疑的數字，任何人當然也沒有辦法來評判報刊上的某篇既定文章相對于其他文章的閱讀量。

????從20世紀90年代開始，網站具備了改變這種狀況的潛能，但除了極少數例外，它并沒有做到這一點。雖然出版商可以使用Google Analytics或Omniture等工具跟蹤統計每篇文章的瀏覽量或獨立訪問者數量，但其中大多數從不向公眾發布這些數據，甚至也不向它們自己的作者公布。在評稿會上，新聞機構的高管們會說，他們不向員工提供這些統計數據，因為不希望記者們為提高瀏覽量而寫稿。然而，鑒于出版商長期以來優化整個在線業務的目的正是為了提高瀏覽量，一位持懷疑態度的觀察家可能很想知道，他們隱瞞這些數據是不是為了防止明星記者提出加薪要求，或者是害怕網站的慘淡流量被泄露出去。

????如果把新聞比作一場馬拉松比賽，那么記錄成績的秒表已經被發明出來了。社交網絡現在提供了可公開訪問，能夠評估一篇文章的通用指標，形式就是這篇文章在Twitter、Facebook、商務社交網站LinkedIn 和谷歌社交平臺Google+上的分享次數——我們姑且稱之為“社交共享”。

????創建社交網絡的本意并不是為了提供這類數據，它只不過是社交網絡在嘗試著將其分享組件置于每個網頁的過程中所產生的一個副產品。這個概念是由Digg公司首先推廣的，這家網絡公司鼓勵出版社將Digg按鈕置于文章頁面。Digg的流行程度逐漸減退之后，Facebook的“喜歡”按鈕和Twitter的tweet組件占據了中心舞臺。它現在已成為社交網站的一個標準功能。

????雖然只有一部分出版社選擇在自己的網頁上顯示社會共享數據，但通過一個簡單的API調用，任何人都可以免費獲得網站任何頁面的共享數據。我們很難低估這種技術在多大程度上改變了在線內容的游戲規則。出版商再也沒有辦法繼續控制一些最重要的分析數據。作者們可以在第一時間獲悉自己作品的實時表現。出版商可以分析競爭對手的出版物上哪些文章備受歡迎或無人問津。我的上一篇專欄文章已經談到，公關經理們可以衡量一篇報道對客戶的影響。甚至政府也無需援引《外國情報監視法》（FISA）就能監控一篇揭露丑聞的報道所產生的反響。

????任何新的衡量指標勢必將引發一場關于其健全程度的激烈爭辯——瀏覽量的價值就被激烈爭論了逾10年之久。“社交共享”自有其優點和缺點。我將在下篇專欄文章中對此進行分析。在此期間，寫手們最好準備一下，以迎接“社交共享”的評判，因為它是目前唯一一個通用的文章評價指標。（財富中文網）

????本文作者格里高利?加蘭特是面向記者和新聞行業的社交網絡Muck Rack的首席執行官。他也是短文獎的共同創始人，該獎項頒發給社交媒體的最佳作者。加蘭特為數家創業公司提供過咨詢服務，并在TechStars創業加速器擔任導師。

????譯者：任文科

????Imagine an Olympic sport without any universal quantitative metrics. Thousands of hyper-competitive athletes competing furiously with each other, but only able to keep score by chatter at cocktail parties and complements from their colleagues. Welcome to the world of journalism for the past several centuries.

????In the age of print, circulation numbers were dubious at best and there was of course no way for anyone to tell how much a given article in a newspaper or magazine was read relative to another.

????The web had the potential to change that starting in the 90s, but with rare exceptions it didn't. While publishers could track stats like pageviews or unique visitors for every article using tools like Google (GOOG) Analytics or Omniture (ADBE), most never released granular data to the public or even their own writers. On a panel, news executives will say they don't make stats available to staff because they don't want their journalists writing for pageviews, but given that publishers have long been optimizing their entire online businesses for pageviews a skeptical observer might wonder if they withhold the data to keep stars from demanding raises or leaks of dismal traffic from occurring.

????If journalism is a marathon, the stopwatch has just been invented. The social web now provides universal, publicly accessible, metrics on which to judge an article in the form of Twitter, Facebook (FB), LinkedIn (LNKD) and Google+ shares -- let's call them social shares.

????Social networks didn't set out to provide this data, it's a byproduct of their bids to get their share widgets (which feature the share count) on every webpage. The concept was popularized by Digg which encouraged publishers to put Digg buttons on article pages. As Digg faded from popularity, Facebook's like button and Twitter's tweet widget took center stage. It's now became a standard social feature.

????While only some publishers choose to display the social share data on their web pages, the data is available for any page on the web to anyone for free through a simple API call. It's hard to understate how much this is changing the game of online content. Publishers no longer control some of the most important analytic data. Writers know how well their work is performing in realtime. Competitors can analyze which articles are successful or duds in rival publications. As I wrote in a prior column, public relations executives can gauge the impact of a story about their clients. Even governments can monitor (without a FISA request) the resonance a muckraking story has.

????Any new metric invites a vigorous debate on how healthy it is -- the value of the pageview has been hotly debated for over a decade -- and the social share has its pros and cons. I'll leave that analysis for another column. In the meantime, writers better prepare to be judged by the social share since it's the only universal metric for articles in town.

????Gregory Galant's the CEO of Muck Rack, the social network for journalists and companies in the news. He's also the cocreator of the Shorty Awards which honors the best of social media. Galant advises several startups and is a mentor in the TechStars startup accelerator. Follow him on Twitter.