Facebook嚴陣以待

????直到最近，Google+上最受歡迎的人還是馬克?扎克伯格，他已經擁有598,000名粉絲，而且數字還在增長。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月份的一次活動上，當被追問關于Google+的看法時，他認為“Google+只是進一步驗證了未來5年網絡的發(fā)展趨勢”。（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總部內氣氛緊張。超過750名工程師加班加點，他們忙碌的身影經常在扎克伯格坐鎮(zhèn)的小型玻璃會議室外往來穿梭；而近年來，這種情形在Facebook僅出現(xiàn)過一次。當時是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工作60天，優(yōu)化網站的關鍵社交功能，如照片、群組和活動等。而與當時一樣，今年夏天，F(xiàn)acebook的餐廳在晚上和周末對員工開放，員工的孩子可以到這里用餐，然后與父母道晚安——因為他們的父母還要工作到很晚。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產品與研發(fā)團隊的一位成員就表示：“【谷歌】可能會在社交項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：情況非常嚴重，我們應該嚴肅對待?！?/p>

????這種焦慮情緒不僅僅表現(xiàn)在推動Facebook開發(fā)出更好的產品， Facebook甚至秘密聘請博雅公關公司（Burson-Marsteller）在報紙和博客上發(fā)表了一系列批評谷歌的文章，但這樣拙劣的舉措結果卻適得其反，因為媒體很快就發(fā)現(xiàn)Facebook是博雅公關的客戶。雖然Facebook聲稱此舉是出于公司對谷歌違反隱私政策行為的擔憂，但它卻因為自己糟糕的判斷力率先成為眾矢之的。

????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人信息，但同時雙方又一直在“保護用戶隱私”方面苦苦掙扎。我們可能對Zappos網站上的一雙鞋發(fā)表了評論，或是在狀態(tài)欄里更新了未來婚禮計劃的信息。而Facebook卻能根據這些信息將我們引導至可能需要的商品廣告上， 于是許多大公司紛紛將Facebook平臺作為在網絡上進行大規(guī)模品牌宣傳活動的首選。因此，雖然Facebook目前的廣告收入遠比不上谷歌，但其增長速度卻快得多。據美國市場研究公司eMarketer預計，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，分析師預測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上消磨更多時間，與Facebook好友分享更多信息，進而積累更多數據？目前，扎克伯格正被這一問題所困擾。在今年9月舉行的F8大會上，他發(fā)布了一項被稱為“時間線”的功能，用來取代Facebook逐漸落伍的個人資料頁面。扎克伯格對這一功能的解釋是：“想象一下，這就像是你正在講述自己的人生經歷一樣?！睘榱饲宄匮菔具@一功能，他以自己的Facebook時間線為例作為說明。這是一個垂直的時間軸，追溯了他的人生經歷，其中按順序列出了他在網站上發(fā)布的所有帖子，通過這些帖子，他一生中所有最重要的時刻一目了然；同時，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：出生于多布斯費里，紐約。實際上，扎克伯格計劃引導用戶將Facebook變成個人生活的數字剪貼本。我們不妨設想一下，假如用戶要補上個人在Facebook誕生之前數十年間的生活片段，他們將要花多少時間上傳照片，整理活動記錄。

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).