Your mom is not cool
人多了就不好玩了
So much for Facebook today. Before turning to the future, remember the immutable laws of finance. Stratospheric growth never lasts. Returns fade. New threats emerge.
关于Facebook的现在，我们就说到这里。在讨论它的未来之前，记住这几个颠扑不破的财务定律：超高的增长率不可能永远持续;回报率永远会越来越低;新的威胁会不断出现。
Hence that first big question: can Facebook burrow into all aspects of computing and stay there, as Microsoft did – or will it give way to the next new thing? Clearly, social networks are unstable in their early years. But once they reach a certain scale they become more resilient. Any communication tool that is already popular has an advantage in attracting new users – the “network effect”. Software designers will aim their best new stuff at the biggest platforms – a phenomenon from which Apple and Android are benefiting in mobile computing.
因此，第一个重大问题：Facebook是会像微软那样将触角伸到计算机行业的各个角落，还是会被下一个新生事物所取代?显然，社交网络在早期的时候不稳定。但达到一定规模以后，它们的抗压能力就会增强。任何已经开始流行的通讯工具都在吸引新用户方面拥有优势，这就是“网络效应”。软件设计师在设计最新最好的程序时，会瞄准最大的平台——在移动计算机领域，苹果(Apple)和Android就是这一现象的获益者。
With 900m active users, Facebook looks dominant already. But investors must consider the possibility that, like most products, its usefulness will peak and decline. Many of the connections users have formed could cease to be of interest. The network starts to carry more noise than information. People look for something more interesting. Social networks have inherent stabilisers as they grow but may also have a big destabiliser: boredom.
有9亿名活跃用户的Facebook似乎已经取得了主导地位。但投资者们必须考虑这样一种可能性：如大多数产品一样，它的作用将达到极限，随后开始下降。用户在社交网络中建立的许多联系人可能会慢慢变得无趣。社交网络携带的噪音将开始超过有用的信息。人们会寻找更有趣的东西。随着社交网络的发展，它会自然地趋于稳定，但同时，一项很大的不稳定因素也会增长：腻烦。
This problem is compounded, it seems likely, by the ever-increasing probability that your mother (or father or teacher) is on Facebook. That is, as user numbers increase, it becomes less cool. The company would argue it does not need to be cool. Once its user base reaches a certain size, it becomes irreplaceable. Should Facebook attain a stable monopoly on social networking, it would be easy to dream of a time when searching for information, reading news, watching television, writing a document or talking on the telephone are activities conducted on the Facebook platform or given a social dimension imported from and controlled by Facebook. It is this picture that makes some analysts think the company could be worth $100bn or more. Certainly, the potential revenue pool is enormous.
使这个问题更严重的是，你母亲(或父亲、老师)也在Facebook上的可能性看来似乎是会不断增加的。也就是说，随着用户数量的不断增长，这个社交网络变得不那么酷了。
But users may not stay loyal for ever. True, all the data that make up a user’s identity – comments, pictures, likes, connections with friends – are in effect owned by, and trapped on, Facebook. The company has carefully made it costly to leave. The question is whether the costs are high enough to prevent flitting among the networks and tools that have not been invented yet. It is hard to quit using Microsoft’s software or Google’s search engine, not just because of network effects but also because almost everyone needs to do things those tools make possible. Competitors are more expensive or not as good. Facebook simply is not essential to life or work in the same way.
Facebook可能会辩称，它不需要很酷。一旦用户数量达到一定规模，它就变得不可替代了。如果Facebook在社交网络领域取得了稳定的垄断地位，我们就容易想象，有朝一日，搜索信息、阅读新闻、看电视、写文件或语音通话等活动，都将在Facebook上进行，或在一种来自Facebook、并被其控制的社交维度中进行。正是这种可能性，使得一些分析师认为，Facebook的估值可能达到1000亿美元甚至更高。当然，潜在的收入池是巨大的。
And remember that Facebook was developed at the tail-end of the PC era. As the smartphone ascends, the company is already playing catch-up with competitors born and bred on mobile devices. Naturally, Facebook could survive without monopolistic control of the social dimension of computing. But it would need to spend aggressively to protect market share, implying lower margins.
但用户可能不会永远保持忠诚。诚然，所有构成用户身份的东西——评论、照片、“赞”、好友关系——实际上都由Facebook拥有和掌管。Facebook的精心设计旨在提高用户注销的成本。但问题是，这个成本是否高到足以防止用户转投未来的新型网络和工具?我们很难弃用微软的软件或谷歌的搜索引擎，不仅因为网络效应，还因为这些工具所提供的服务是几乎所有人都必须用到的。转投微软或谷歌的竞争对手要花费更高的成本，或无法获得同样质量的服务。而Facebook对人们的生活或工作并没有那么重要。
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而且，Facebook是在PC时代的末期开发的。随着智能手机的出现，这家企业已经被一些根植于移动设备的竞争者甩在了身后。当然，即便Facebook无法垄断计算机业的整个社交领域，它也可以生存。但那样的话，Facebook可能需要花很多钱来保护市场份额，这意味着它的利润率会降低。
