????現在新聞出版界已經開始彌漫恐慌的氣氛。《紐約雜志》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。因為我們已經知道，當Facebook失去對某個事物的興趣時，它會面臨怎樣的后果——凋零和死亡。這樣的事情就曾經發生在Zynga等社交游戲公司身上。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，后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。

????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注冊了相關應用。但后來Facebook改變了它的算法，這些文章和應用出現的頻率大大降低，讀者群幾乎一夜之間就大大縮水。

????對于出版商來說，最大的風險并不是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?格里菲斯認為，Facebook與新聞業關系緊張是事實，而Facebook對新聞進行審查的情況也并不鮮見）。最大的風險是，Facebook會搶走新聞媒體與讀者的關系，而當Facebook隨后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?吉爾摩等Facebook觀察家們深感擔憂。

????短期看來，Facebook的“instant articles”對于一些媒體公司是件好事。但作為一個整體，新聞業所面臨的后果要壞得多。

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

????湯普森和很多觀察人士認為，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。這也就是為什么此次合作比經典的“浮士德式交易”還要令人悲哀。由于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——盡管他們和廣告商都在不遺余力地吸引讀者。

????這就是為什么說所有的好牌都在Facebook手里。它的平臺、勢力范圍、用戶群以及對廣告商的吸引力，是大多數新聞公司根本無法復制的。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，其付費墻收入的增長也在驟然變平。誰知道他們的未來在哪里？

????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，至少它是否比發布新聞內容的媒體本身更可信。

????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——至少對于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為之灑淚。那么，一個由Facebook掌控新聞渠道的世界會是什么樣子？且讓我們拭目以待。（財富中文網）

????譯者：樸成奎

????審校：任文科

????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.

????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.

????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:

????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.

????— Dan Gillmor (@dangillmor) May 13, 2015

????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.

????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?

????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.

????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.