十年是一段很長(zhǎng)的時(shí)間——即使是在現(xiàn)實(shí)世界。在互聯(lián)網(wǎng)領(lǐng)域，它更猶如一個(gè)世紀(jì)，尤其是以初創(chuàng)公司的壽命來(lái)衡量的話。而這就是Facebook實(shí)時(shí)新聞推送服務(wù)（News Feeds）上線的時(shí)長(zhǎng)，如今，它已經(jīng)成為了擁有超過(guò)15億用戶的服務(wù)的核心組成部分。

“我們現(xiàn)在甚至很難想象沒(méi)有這個(gè)基本功能的社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)。”本周二，在與首席執(zhí)行官馬克·扎克伯格及其他三個(gè)新聞推送團(tuán)隊(duì)的最早成員進(jìn)行討論時(shí)，F(xiàn)acebook的早期員工“博茲”安德魯·博斯沃斯回憶說(shuō)。（當(dāng)然，這次活動(dòng)通過(guò)Facebook的流媒體服務(wù)進(jìn)行了直播。）

博茲表示，當(dāng)時(shí)，網(wǎng)站“只是一個(gè)頁(yè)面，有根大手指，指示新文章的數(shù)量。”用戶需要點(diǎn)擊每個(gè)好友的主頁(yè)，試圖回憶他們的上篇博文是什么，有沒(méi)有更新內(nèi)容。

扎克伯格回憶說(shuō)：“很難回憶起那么久以前的事情了，不過(guò)當(dāng)時(shí)你得到處瀏覽，看看好友的主頁(yè)，看看誰(shuí)在他們的留言板上寫(xiě)了東西，他們發(fā)了什么新文章。如果你在主頁(yè)上更新了內(nèi)容，也沒(méi)法保證其他人會(huì)去看它。現(xiàn)在我們都覺(jué)得有人去看是理所應(yīng)當(dāng)?shù)摹诋?dāng)時(shí)，世界上沒(méi)有類似的產(chǎn)品。”

團(tuán)隊(duì)最初的三個(gè)成員，包括克里斯·考克斯（如今負(fù)責(zé)新聞推送的產(chǎn)品開(kāi)發(fā)）和魯奇·桑格威，一起努力了大約9個(gè)月。2006年9月5日深夜，新聞推送功能就此誕生。

接下來(lái)一切都一團(tuán)糟。

博茲在直播時(shí)回憶道，他在產(chǎn)品發(fā)布前就去休假了。所以桑格威、考克斯和工程師Kang-Xing Jin只能用扎克伯格的電腦關(guān)注用戶對(duì)該功能的最初反應(yīng)。當(dāng)時(shí)，F(xiàn)acebook只有約1,000萬(wàn)用戶，其中許多人似乎都認(rèn)為新聞推送是Facebook推出的服務(wù)中最糟糕的。

扎克伯格在直播中說(shuō)：“在公司內(nèi)部，我們都很喜歡它，看起來(lái)它明顯是個(gè)不錯(cuò)的功能，所以當(dāng)我們推出這項(xiàng)服務(wù)時(shí)，我們希望讓人們感到興奮，我們期待著第一批反饋。但最后我們得到的并不是好消息。”

考克斯回憶道，開(kāi)發(fā)團(tuán)隊(duì)發(fā)現(xiàn)有超過(guò)100萬(wàn)用戶都在呼吁：“我討厭新聞推送，請(qǐng)把它關(guān)掉。”

根據(jù)當(dāng)時(shí)的頭條新聞所述，許多用戶討厭新聞推送，是因?yàn)樗軓氐椎馗淖兞司W(wǎng)站的運(yùn)轉(zhuǎn)方式。另一個(gè)令人討厭的地方在于新聞推送會(huì)以一種更加明顯的方式反映用戶的行為——贊、分享和評(píng)論等。

許多用戶似乎把這看作對(duì)隱私權(quán)的侵犯，之后Facebook推出的幾乎每個(gè)新功能都會(huì)受到類似的控訴。桑格威指出，約有10%的用戶威脅要?jiǎng)h除賬號(hào)或抵制這項(xiàng)服務(wù)。

扎克伯格被迫為這次轉(zhuǎn)型的處理方式發(fā)表道歉聲明。他寫(xiě)道：“冷靜下來(lái)，深呼吸。我們會(huì)聽(tīng)取你的意見(jiàn)。”當(dāng)時(shí)許多人認(rèn)為這是標(biāo)準(zhǔn)的充耳不聞的做法。

Facebook共同創(chuàng)始人和初始團(tuán)隊(duì)在直播中清楚大聲地表達(dá)了他們對(duì)于新聞推送的熱忱。桑格威表示，這一靈感來(lái)源于他們看到人們不斷點(diǎn)擊一個(gè)個(gè)好友的主頁(yè)，于是他們?cè)囍伎荚鯓雍?jiǎn)化用戶的操作。

不過(guò)很顯然，在當(dāng)時(shí)，他們的想法和人們的看法有著巨大的差異。

這種差異可能在許多方面還延續(xù)到了如今。現(xiàn)在，每天使用新聞推送的用戶超過(guò)15億，因此，它能大大影響人們每天看到的全球各地的信息，無(wú)論是嬰兒照，還是關(guān)于爆炸的新聞，或是警察槍擊。

這種影響反過(guò)來(lái)幫助Facebook控制了（無(wú)論Facebook承認(rèn)與否）大型媒體的命運(yùn)，后者如今要依靠社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)向用戶推送內(nèi)容。Facebook還可以在廣告上爭(zhēng)取利益，作為播放媒體內(nèi)容的回報(bào)，或是讓媒體付費(fèi)來(lái)進(jìn)行直播。每次Facebook調(diào)整算法，這些媒體機(jī)構(gòu)都會(huì)感到戰(zhàn)栗。

正如澤伊內(nèi)普·圖菲克西和其他一些社會(huì)學(xué)家指出的那樣，新聞推送還從許多重要的方面塑造了人們看待世界的方式。它決定推送哪些內(nèi)容，不推送哪些內(nèi)容，都會(huì)帶來(lái)巨大的影響。

考克斯是在新聞推送功能上線前一年加入Facebook的。他回憶起當(dāng)時(shí)與公司的共同創(chuàng)始人達(dá)斯汀·莫斯科維茨和早期員工亞當(dāng)·德安吉洛的談話：新聞推送應(yīng)該如何成為用戶在數(shù)字世界的“報(bào)紙”——這個(gè)比喻被他和扎克伯格繼續(xù)沿用了下去。

在人類的歷史上，報(bào)紙是最受歡迎的新聞來(lái)源，它也讓Facebook從一家小型初創(chuàng)公司轉(zhuǎn)變成了市值超過(guò)3,750億美元的跨國(guó)巨頭。

作為一個(gè)產(chǎn)品，新聞推送顯然獲得了巨大的成功。不過(guò)作為一項(xiàng)社會(huì)現(xiàn)象，它的全面影響才剛剛開(kāi)始浮現(xiàn)。(財(cái)富中文網(wǎng))

譯者：嚴(yán)匡正

A decade is a long time—even in the real world. On the Internet, it is more like a century, especially in the life of a startup. But that’s how long it has been since Facebook launched the real-time news feed that has become the core of the service for more than 1.5 billion people.

It’s hard to even imagine the social network now without this essential feature, as early Facebook staffer Andrew “Boz” Bosworth recalled during a discussion with CEO Mark Zuckerberg and three other members of the original news feed team on Tuesday (hosted via Facebook’s live-streaming video service, of course).

At that time, the site “was just a page with a big finger pointing at the number of new posts you had,” Boz said. Users had to click on the profiles of each of the people they were friends with, and then try to remember what their last post was and if anything had changed.

“It’s hard to remember back that far, but you had to just browse around and check people’s profiles, to see who wrote on someone’s wall or what they had posted,” Zuckerberg recalled. “There was no guarantee if you put something on your profile that someone was even going to see it. Now we kind of take it for granted…But at the time, there was really nothing like it in the world.”

After about nine months of work by the three members of the original team, which included Chris Cox—now in charge of product development for the news feed—and Ruchi Sanghvi, the new feature was rolled out late at night on September 5th, 2006.

And then all hell broke loose.

Boz left on vacation just before the launch, he recalled during the Live broadcast. So Sanghvi, Cox, and engineer Kang-Xing Jin had to watch the initial reaction while gathered around Zuckerberg’s PC. At that time, Facebook FB 2.55% only had about 10 million users, and a huge number of them seemed to think the news feed was the worst thing that had ever happened to the service.

“We all loved it internally, and it seemed pretty clear it would be a good thing, so when we launched it we expected people to be really excited, and we were waiting for the first feedback to come in,” Zuckerberg said during the Live broadcast. “But it was not good news.”

Cox recalled the team woke up to a new group with more than a million members called, “I Hate the News Feed, Turn It Off.”

As the headlines from that time reflect, many people hated the news feed because it changed the way the site worked in a fairly radical way. They also disliked it because it revealed their behavior—likes, shares, and comments, etc.—in a more obvious way.

Many users seemed to see this is an invasion of privacy, something that has become a running theme with almost every new feature that Facebook rolls out. Sanghvi cited approximately 10% of the existing user base threatened to delete their accounts or boycott the service.

Zuckerberg was forced to write an apology for the way the transition was handled. “Calm down. Breathe. We hear you,” he wrote, in what many said at the time was a classically tone-deaf manner.

The enthusiasm that the Facebook co-founder and the original team had for the idea of the news feed comes across loud and clear in the Live stream. Sanghvi said that the idea came from watching people clicking around from profile to profile, and trying to think of ways to make that easier for users.

But it was clear at the time that there was a huge disconnect between that desire and how it was perceived.

That disconnect arguably continues today in a variety of ways. The news feed is now used by more than 1.5 billion people every day, and as such, it has a huge influence on the information that people see about the world, whether it’s baby photos or news about a bombing or a police shooting.

That influence in turn helps control (whether Facebook wants to admit it or not) the fate of large media entities, who now rely on the social network to send users to their content, or to cut advertising deals with them in return for hosting their content, or to pay them to create Live video. And every time Facebook tweaks its algorithm, those media outlets tremble.

The feed also shapes the way that people see the world in some fairly significant ways, as sociologist Zeynep Tufekci and others have pointed out. What it chooses to include and exclude can have a huge impact.

Cox, who joined Facebook a year before the news feed was rolled out, recalled talking with Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and early staffer Adam D’Angelo about how the news feed should be a “newspaper” for the digital world around its users—a metaphor he and Zuckerberg have continued to use.

That newspaper has become the most popular news source in the history of humanity, and it has also powered the transformation of Facebook from a tiny startup into a globe-spanning behemoth with a market value of more than $375 billion.

As a product, it is clearly a massive success. But as a social phenomenon, its full implications are only just starting to become obvious.