Facebook嚴(yán)陣以待

????直到最近，Google+上最受歡迎的人還是馬克?扎克伯格，他已經(jīng)擁有598,000名粉絲，而且數(shù)字還在增長。但到目前為止，他并未發(fā)布任何公共信息，而且他根本就不希望討論Google+。在7月份的一次活動(dòng)上，當(dāng)被追問關(guān)于Google+的看法時(shí)，他認(rèn)為“Google+只是進(jìn)一步驗(yàn)證了未來5年網(wǎng)絡(luò)的發(fā)展趨勢(shì)”。（言下之意似乎是：他們只是在抄襲我們而已。)

????但在今年夏季的封閉研發(fā)期間，位于帕洛阿爾托市的Facebook總部內(nèi)氣氛緊張。超過750名工程師加班加點(diǎn)，他們忙碌的身影經(jīng)常在扎克伯格坐鎮(zhèn)的小型玻璃會(huì)議室外往來穿梭；而近年來，這種情形在Facebook僅出現(xiàn)過一次。當(dāng)時(shí)是2010年夏天，外界盛傳谷歌正在開發(fā)“Facebook殺手”，于是扎克伯格要求工程師們加班加點(diǎn)工作60天，優(yōu)化網(wǎng)站的關(guān)鍵社交功能，如照片、群組和活動(dòng)等。而與當(dāng)時(shí)一樣，今年夏天，F(xiàn)acebook的餐廳在晚上和周末對(duì)員工開放，員工的孩子可以到這里用餐，然后與父母道晚安——因?yàn)樗麄兊母改高€要工作到很晚。到今年9月份，F(xiàn)acebook發(fā)布了一系列新功能，例如可以與Google+的圈子功能媲美的群組工具。Facebook產(chǎn)品與研發(fā)團(tuán)隊(duì)的一位成員就表示：“【谷歌】可能會(huì)在社交項(xiàng)目上投入巨額資金和海量人力。所以，F(xiàn)acebook的所有人都感覺：情況非常嚴(yán)重，我們應(yīng)該嚴(yán)肅對(duì)待。”

????這種焦慮情緒不僅僅表現(xiàn)在推動(dòng)Facebook開發(fā)出更好的產(chǎn)品， Facebook甚至秘密聘請(qǐng)博雅公關(guān)公司（Burson-Marsteller）在報(bào)紙和博客上發(fā)表了一系列批評(píng)谷歌的文章，但這樣拙劣的舉措結(jié)果卻適得其反，因?yàn)槊襟w很快就發(fā)現(xiàn)Facebook是博雅公關(guān)的客戶。雖然Facebook聲稱此舉是出于公司對(duì)谷歌違反隱私政策行為的擔(dān)憂，但它卻因?yàn)樽约涸愀獾呐袛嗔β氏瘸蔀楸娛钢摹?/p>

????但具有諷刺意義的是，F(xiàn)acebook和谷歌一方面都希望盡可能為各自的廣告商挖掘盡可能多的用戶個(gè)人信息，但同時(shí)雙方又一直在“保護(hù)用戶隱私”方面苦苦掙扎。我們可能對(duì)Zappos網(wǎng)站上的一雙鞋發(fā)表了評(píng)論，或是在狀態(tài)欄里更新了未來婚禮計(jì)劃的信息。而Facebook卻能根據(jù)這些信息將我們引導(dǎo)至可能需要的商品廣告上， 于是許多大公司紛紛將Facebook平臺(tái)作為在網(wǎng)絡(luò)上進(jìn)行大規(guī)模品牌宣傳活動(dòng)的首選。因此，雖然Facebook目前的廣告收入遠(yuǎn)比不上谷歌，但其增長速度卻快得多。據(jù)美國市場(chǎng)研究公司eMarketer預(yù)計(jì)，今年Facebook的廣告收入將飆升至43億美元，較去年的20億美元增長一倍多。而相比而言，分析師預(yù)測(cè)谷歌今年廣告收入的增長幅度僅為30%，約為380億美元。

????如何讓更多用戶在Facebook上消磨更多時(shí)間，與Facebook好友分享更多信息，進(jìn)而積累更多數(shù)據(jù)？目前，扎克伯格正被這一問題所困擾。在今年9月舉行的F8大會(huì)上，他發(fā)布了一項(xiàng)被稱為“時(shí)間線”的功能，用來取代Facebook逐漸落伍的個(gè)人資料頁面。扎克伯格對(duì)這一功能的解釋是：“想象一下，這就像是你正在講述自己的人生經(jīng)歷一樣。”為了清楚地演示這一功能，他以自己的Facebook時(shí)間線為例作為說明。這是一個(gè)垂直的時(shí)間軸，追溯了他的人生經(jīng)歷，其中按順序列出了他在網(wǎng)站上發(fā)布的所有帖子，通過這些帖子，他一生中所有最重要的時(shí)刻一目了然；同時(shí)，這一功能促使他發(fā)布了大量的帖子和照片來追溯人生，一直回溯到1984年5月14日。帖子寫到：出生于多布斯費(fèi)里，紐約。實(shí)際上，扎克伯格計(jì)劃引導(dǎo)用戶將Facebook變成個(gè)人生活的數(shù)字剪貼本。我們不妨設(shè)想一下，假如用戶要補(bǔ)上個(gè)人在Facebook誕生之前數(shù)十年間的生活片段，他們將要花多少時(shí)間上傳照片，整理活動(dòng)記錄。

Facebook

????Until recently, the most popular person on Google+, with 598,000 followers and counting, was Mark Zuckerberg. But he has yet to make a public post, and indeed he'd prefer not to discuss Google+ at all. When pressed at a July event, he called it only a "validation as to how the next five years are going to play out." (Translation: Uh, they're copying us.)

????However, inside the Palo Alto office where more than 750 engineers regularly pass by the small glass conference room in which Zuckerberg, 27, holds court, Facebook employees put in some serious overtime during the summer lockdown. This had happened only once before in recent years at Facebook: After word leaked that Google was starting work on a "Facebook killer" in summer 2010, Zuckerberg called on engineers to work nights and weekends for 60 days to revamp key social features like photos, groups, and events. Just as it did then, the cafeteria opened up on evenings and weekends this summer, and children dropped in for dinners and good-night hugs before their parents logged back on for late nights. By September, Facebook had released a slew of new features like better grouping tools to mirror those Google+ circles. Says one member of the product and engineering team: "[Google] can throw all the money in the world, including hundreds of people, at this. So people were, like, This is serious, and we should take it seriously."

????That anxiety wasn't simply channeled into building a better product. In May, Facebook secretly hired public relations firm Burson-Marsteller to plant anti-Google stories in papers and blogs, a ham-fisted move that backfired when journalists discovered Facebook was Burson's client. The company defended its concerns about Google's privacy violations but took the flak for bad judgment.

????The irony, of course, is that Facebook and Google both are in a constant struggle to respect users' privacy while mining as much personal information as possible for the companies' advertisers. All that social information we plug into Facebook when we "like" a pair of shoes on Zappos or update our status about future wedding plans helps the company serve us up ads for things we're more likely to want. This has made Facebook into the go-to advertising platform for big marketers hoping to do brand advertising at scale on the web. As a result, even though Facebook's revenue is minuscule compared with Google's, it is growing at a much faster rate. It is expected to surge to $4.3 billion this year, or more than double the $2 billion it had last year, according to eMarketer. In contrast, analysts predict that Google's revenue will grow just 30%, to $38 billion.

????Zuckerberg is obsessed with figuring out how to amass more data by getting more people to spend more time sharing more things with their Facebook friends. At the F8 event in September, he unveiled something called a timeline to replace Facebook's aging profile pages. "Imagine expressing the story of your life," Zuckerberg explained. To demonstrate, he popped up his own Facebook timeline, where a vertical line scrolled backward through his personal history, curating all the posts he'd ever made on the site to bring to the surface the most important items and encouraging him to add posts and photos going all the way back to the May 14, 1984, post: Born, Dobbs Ferry, New York. In effect, Zuckerberg plans to coax us into making Facebook our living digital scrapbooks. Imagine the hours users may log uploading photos and labeling events from the lost decades B.F. (Before Facebook).