Facebook首席執行官兼創始人馬克·扎克伯格。

2016年已經過去，社交網站Facebook形勢大好。公司營業收入達到250億美元且增長強勁，用戶已達17億，股價也漲到前所未有的高位。然而，Facebook在2016年的輝煌戰績將在今年變成挑戰。

一言以蔽之，在成為有史以來最大社交媒體之后，Facebook必須想辦法保持增長，尤其需要維持廣告收入增長。連Facebook自己也承認，如今新聞信息流中已經滿是廣告。

Facebook已明確表示，視頻是社交網絡的未來，因此視頻廣告顯然是Facebook下一步重點。但出于種種原因，視頻廣告業務還存在問題，這可能是Facebook尚未推出的原因。

視頻廣告市場看上去形勢喜人，可許多分析師認為泡沫即將破裂。沒有人會關注視頻播放前的貼片廣告。如果視頻正片也只有幾秒，不論是播放前還是播放中途插入的廣告都很難說有價值。直播視頻流也很難做到在完全不打擾觀眾的前提下插入廣告。

種種問題很可能只會越發嚴重，因為Facebook上仍然在涌現大量短視頻和直播視頻。稍微懂一點經濟學就能明白，供應激增只有一個顯而易見的后果：價格大跌。

期望視頻業務增長的新生代科技企業不只Facebook一家。谷歌旗下的YouTube希望在守住市場領頭羊地位的同時繼續開拓業務，意味著供應進一步增加，對價格施加壓力。Snapchat的工作重心也放在和Facebook正面交鋒上，所以Instagram總是推出跟Snapchat幾乎完全相同的功能。

邁入2017年，Facebook不得不想辦法解決一些關鍵問題。目前Facebook押寶未來是視頻的天下，也確實有稱霸視頻領域的財力，但競爭者都很強勁，而且遠比Facebook熟悉視頻業務。有時候，大手筆花錢不一定能保證成功。

種種挑戰是否意味著2017年Facebook的股價會暴跌？難說。不過上市公司講述成長故事時，投資者總是更喜歡挑毛病。盡管社交網絡巨頭的資產負債表看起來很美，Facebook仍需努力。（財富中文網）

譯者：Pessy

審校：夏林

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer and founder of Facebook Inc.

As 2016 draws to a close, Facebook looks to be in a pretty fantastic spot. Revenues are at $25 billion and growing strongly—as is the company's 1.7 billion user base—and the stock has never been higher. And yet, all of that greatness sums up the social network's challenge for 2017.

In a nutshell, Facebook (fb) has to figure out how to keep growing when it is already the largest company of its kind that has ever existed. In particular, it needs to find a way to keep its advertising revenues increasing when even Facebook itself admits that the average news feed is already as full of ads as it can possibly get.

Video ads are the next obvious frontier for Facebook to conquer, especially because the company has made it clear that video is the future of the social network. But video advertising is problematic for a number of reasons, which is probably why Facebook hasn't introduced it yet.

Although the video-ad market still seems healthy enough, many analysts believe it is a bubble waiting to pop. Virtually no one watches pre-roll ads, and both pre- and mid-roll ads are difficult to justify when a video clip is only a few seconds long. Live streams are also hard to insert ads into without losing the intended audience completely.

These problems are only likely to get worse as Facebook continues to flood the market with short-form and live-streaming video. Simple economics suggests that that kind of explosion of supply will produce one obvious outcome: Namely, a dramatic decline in prices.

And Facebook isn't alone in wanting to grow in video. YouTube wants to not only defend its market-leading position but expand it, and that means more supply and pressure on pricing. Snapchat is also focused on going head-to-head with Facebook, which helps explain why Instagram keeps launching features that are essentially identical to Snapchat's.

As we head into 2017, these are some of the key issues for which Facebook will have to come up with a solution. It has staked its future on video, and it has the deep pockets that will be required to prevail—but its competitors are strong in areas that Facebook isn't. And having a lot of money to throw at a problem doesn't always result in success.

Does any of this mean that Facebook's stock will nosedive in 2017? Hardly. But investors are always looking for weak spots in a company's growth story, and despite the rosy picture that its balance sheet paints, the social-networking giant still has some work to do.