????當然，Facebook自然是希望能夠達到高的發展速度，但可能性微乎其微。我們可以看看一組數字。谷歌上市前的最后一個季度，即2004年第一季度，公司營收比去年同期上漲了161%，而盈利也上漲了109%。憑借強勁的盈利增長勢頭，投資者才會給出高估值。而且，公司也沒有讓投資者失望，三年后，即2007年第二季度，公司營收比2004年同期增長了590%，而盈利增長幅度更是驚人，達到了667%。

????現在再來看看Facebook。今年第一季度，Facebook的營收僅比去年同期增長了45%，而其盈利實際上下跌了12%。這樣的數字很難讓投資者相信，這是一家具有超強增長前景的公司。

????Facebook正以極快地速度走向成熟。隨著越來越多的用戶將手機作為主要上網途徑，其主要平臺電腦網站開始逐漸被手機平臺所取代。Facebook的投資者必須堅信，公司可以在很短時間內實現手機平臺的貨幣化。公司也認為，通過在用戶的“個人新聞中心”中植入廣告可以滿足投資者的需求。雖然這種做法確實可行，但它能否成功帶來足夠的營收，證明Facebook高得離譜的估值確實合理？對此，我們無從判斷。

????而且，手機廣告能否達到廣告商想要的效果，目前尚不清楚。畢竟，使用電腦登陸Facebook的用戶很少點擊網站上的廣告。美聯社（Associated Press ）與CNBC近期進行的一份調查顯示，83%的Facebook用戶“幾乎從未”點擊過Facebook網站上的廣告。雖然，公司的路演視頻演示了一些滿意的公司，比如班杰瑞冰激凌（Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream）和迪阿吉奧公司（Diageo）。這些公司通過在Facebook上的廣告實現了業務增長，但它們其實只是例外。本周，美國最大的廣告商之一通用汽車公司（General Motors）宣布停止在Facebook上投放廣告，稱廣告“效果太差”。其他大型公司可能很快也會做出相同的決定。在一家市盈率在100倍以上的公司身上，投資者絕對不希望看到這樣的事情發生。

????當然，Facebook確實有相當大的價值，但還達不到1,040億美元的水平，至少目前還不行。雖然公司確實掌握著全球數以千萬計的用戶個人信息，而且對于市場營銷商和廣告商而言，這確實是寶貴的資源。但問題在于，Facebook已經擁有9億強大的用戶基礎，它的發展空間還能有多大？公司的用戶基礎肯定會繼續擴大，但肯定不會再有以前那樣的發展速度。

????實際上，在Facebook作為主流社交媒體平臺的國家，用戶的拋物線式增長似乎已經出現。Facebook可以在這些國家擴大其用戶基礎，但不可能像以前一樣迅速。不是因為這些國家的競爭，而是因為還沒有成為Facebook的人們處于某些原因決定不選擇Facebook，其中主要是出于對隱私問題的擔憂。

????在Facebook影響力較弱的國家，人們并不是沒有聽說過它，只是人們已經在使用其他的社交媒體平臺。這些平臺包括韓國的賽我網（Cyworld）、日本的明希網絡（Mixi）、巴西和印度的Orkut（谷歌旗下的社交媒體網站） ，以及俄羅斯的vKontakte。此外，Facebook還沒有進入中國市場，當然這并不稀奇，但如果它有能力打入中國，則可能面臨人人網（Ren Ren）、新浪網（Sina）和騰訊網（Tencent）的圍剿。而這些被Facebook的競爭對手所占據的市場同時也是巨大的新興市場，這些國家經濟發展迅速，而人們生活水平也在不斷提高。

????從長期來看，Facebook要想取得成功，需要在創新上下大力氣，要想真正實現、甚至是接近其估值，可能需要開拓新業務。當然，說起來容易，做起來難。以谷歌為例，在其核心的搜索業務之外，谷歌一直沒有取得太顯著的成就，而Facebook要想在facebook.com的基礎上尋求突破也免不了步谷歌的后塵。華爾街已經為Facebook募得了數十億美元，以讓它大展拳腳——但愿Facebook能理智地支配這些錢。

????翻譯/審計 阿龍/汪皓

????Facebook would love to grow that fast, but it probably won't even get close. Let's look at some numbers. In Google's final quarter as a public company, the first quarter of 2004, its revenues jumped 161% from the same period a year earlier, while its earnings jumped 109%. Given its strong earnings momentum investors rewarded the company with a high valuation. The company didn't disappoint and three years later in the second quarter of 2007 its revenues were up 590% from the same period in 2004, while earnings grew by an even more impressive 667%.

????Now let's look at Facebook. In the first quarter of this year its revenue grew by just 45% from the same period a year earlier while its earnings actually fell 12%. It's hard to justify to investors that you are a super hot growth company with numbers like that.

????Facebook appears to be maturing at a rapid rate. Its main platform, the desktop website, is losing eyeballs to its mobile platform as more and more people use their phones as the primary way to access the web. Investors in Facebook will need to have faith that the company can somehow monetize its mobile platform – and fast. The company thinks it will be able to do this by inserting ads in users "newsfeeds." While that's certainly possible, it is unknown as to whether such a move will successfully produce enough revenue to justify Facebook's lofty valuation.

????It's also unclear if mobile ads will produce results for advertisers. After all, users on its desktop version rarely click on Facebook ads. A recent poll conducted by the Associated Press and CNBC found that 83% of Facebook users "hardly ever" clicked on a Facebook ad. While the company's road show video highlighted happy businesses, like Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream and Diageo, which saw a boost in business by advertising through Facebook, they may actually be the exception. This week, General Motors (GM), one of the largest advertisers in the United States, reportedly has stopped paying for ads on Facebook, saying that they were "ineffective." Other major companies might soon follow. This is not what you want to see from a company that will soon trade at over 100 times earnings.

????To be sure, Facebook does have considerable value – just not $104 billion in value, at least not yet. It does have personal information on hundreds of millions of people from around the globe and that's truly valuable stuff for marketers and advertisers. But the question is can Facebook grow its already 900 million strong user base? It should, but it probably won't happen as fast as it did in the past.

????Indeed, it appears that the parabolic growth in users has already taken place in countries where it is the dominant social media platform. Facebook will be able to grow its user base in those countries, but not as fast as it did before. Not because there is competition in those countries, but because the people who are not on Facebook choose not to be on Facebook for some reason or another, mostly due to privacy concerns.

????In countries where Facebook does not have a strong presence, it's not because people haven't heard of it; rather, it's because they are already using another social media platform. Those platforms include Cyworld in Korea, Mixi in Japan, Orkut (owned by Google) in Brazil and India and vKontakte in Russia. Facebook isn't in China, which is not a surprise, but if it is ever able to get in, it would face competition from social media sites like Ren Ren, Sina and Tencent. The countries where Facebook isn't big due to a competitor are also the big emerging markets where the economy is growing rapidly and the population is becoming more affluent.

????To be successful in the long term, Facebook will need to get very creative and probably open new business lines if it wants to ever come close to living up to its valuation. That's easier said than done. Google hasn't really shown that much progress in growing outside of its core search product and Facebook will probably experience the same thing as it tries to grow beyond just facebook.com. Wall Street has now raised several billion dollars for Facebook to make a go at it – let's hope they spend it wisely.