我們為何愛看Facebook的笑話？
|
????我們都喜歡白手起家的故事，但從中產到一夜暴富就沒那么吸引眼球了。而那就是Facebook的故事，主角是其創始人兼首席執行官馬克?扎克伯格：聰明的小伙想到一個好點子，然后就成為億萬富翁。更令人不爽的是，我們都意識到，他是利用我們（至少是關于我們的數據）發財致富的。 ????就像有線電視公司一樣，Facebook也有競爭者，但其影響力無人能及，以至于用戶有時（會因為沒有其它選擇而）有無助的感覺。也許這就是人們對其虎頭蛇尾的IPO幸災樂禍的原因吧。 ????包括我們在內，媒體已經對Facebook的上市進行了鋪天蓋地的報道。實際上，僅僅在過去兩個星期之內，Fortune.com的主頁就發布了24篇文章，講述Facebook公司的成長歷程。 ????Facebook最近的失誤之所以引起公眾的強烈關注，除了其IPO的巨大規模，另一方面也是由于其品牌的知名度。每個公司都對這家社交網絡羨慕嫉妒恨：人人都知道它，就算不用的人也一樣。某些用戶，特別是十幾歲或者更小的小孩，已經把Facebook當成其生活的重要部分。 ????不過每當公司做一些影響用戶體驗甚至是威脅個人隱私的改變時，用戶就會立即跳出來抱怨。現在，公司正面臨金融方面的新挑戰：其股票在首個交易日堪堪保發（在本文發布時，已經從上市價格下跌了13%），這些糟糕表現引發了股東的怒火，他們甚至向公司提起訴訟。我們還在使用Facebook，但我們能否再“喜歡”上它呢？ 為CEO名聲所累 ????Facebook的品牌問題部分來自于馬克?扎克伯格，這個娃娃臉、超群智力和億萬身家的組合。商業人士對他又是嫉妒又是敬畏。電影《社交網絡》（The Social Network）助長了這種情緒，該片夸張地描述了公司的源起，那是一個撞大運、爾虞我詐和聲名鵲起的故事。你想要痛恨這種生活方式，私底下卻又想據為己有。 ????每當有人像扎克伯格這樣一舉成名，身家暴漲，我們就等著看他的笑話，就職于加州咨詢公司DUNN的高級品牌策略專家邁克爾?鄧恩如是說。“Facebook這樣的新貴會遇到和卡戴珊家族（因真人秀而走紅——譯注）同樣的問題：我們的文化傳統就是這樣，如果某人一炮走紅，我們也很容易將其趕下神壇。” |
????We all love a rags-to-riches story, but a relative-comfort-to-exorbitant wealth story is less enticing. That has been Facebook's story, which, until this point, has been all about its founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg: A smart kid with a good idea becomes a billionaire. What's more, he becomes a billionaire, we have all realized, off of us (or at least our data). ????And like cable companies, Facebook (FB) has competitors, but none that match its reach, which leaves users sometimes feeling a sense of powerlessness. Perhaps that is why, in the whirlwind of its anticlimactic IPO, there has been a sort of glee in watching the company stumble. ????The media, including this publication, has covered Facebook's public offering to death. Indeed, over the past two weeks, Fortune.com devoted its homepage real estate to a whopping 24 stories on the company's coming of age. ????Facebook's recent fumbles have drawn so much attention partly because of the sheer size of its IPO, but also because of the enormity of its brand. The social network is recognizable in a way that many companies would kill for: everyone knows what it is, even people who don't use it. Some of the people who use it, especially teenagers and pre-teens, see it as critical to their quality of life. ????Yet Facebook users are also quick to rail against the company for changes that tweak the experience or threaten privacy. And now, the social network is confronting a hurdle on the finance side – its stock opened flat on its first day of trading (and, at the time of publication, is down by over 13% since its IPO) and it must cope with shareholder anger, coming in hot by way of lawsuits. We all use Facebook, but can the company get us to like it again? Pitfalls of a celebrity CEO ????Part of Facebook's branding problem has to do with Mark Zuckerberg, with his boyish face, brilliant brain, and billions of dollars. The business world seems to view the founder with a combination of jealousy and awe, fueled perhaps by the portrayal of the company's origins in the movie The Social Network, which glorified a tale of dumb luck, cutthroat cunning, and fast fame. You want to hate that lifestyle, but you can't help but want it for yourself. ????When someone like Zuckerberg succeeds so quickly and with such a huge monetary payoff, we all wait for him to trip, says Michael Dunn, senior brand strategist at California-based consulting firm DUNN. "An upstart like Facebook has the same problem that the Kardashians have: it's easy to us as a culture to knock people off that pedestal, especially when they got up on the pedestal very rapidly." |
