扎克伯格：我们为什么不搞手机

    Facebook即将发布Facebook智能手机软件包之前的一周，公司CEO马克•扎克伯格接受了《财富》高级作家杰西•亨佩尔的专访，谈到了他改造Facebook的举措，目的是满足大量用户通过智能手机登录社交网络的需求。（专访全文将刊登在４月２９日的《财富》杂志上）以下是本次采访的部分摘要：

    财富：请谈谈贵公司向一家移动导向型企业转变的过程。

    扎克伯格：当年iPhone刚刚推出的时候，我们构建的应用就是iPhone第一批应用中的一个。当时我们构建的架构要远远领先于别人。当时是２００８年左右，那时Facebook的设计是，你把程序打开后，里面就有各种各样的图标。当时我们还不知道世界将主要被iPhone和Android系统垄断。当时黑莓（Blackberry）手机也是一方霸主，而且仍在继续增长。而且我们当时也知道，微软（Microsoft）也将会对Windows采取一些行动。我们认为，未来将会出现四五个不同的操作系统，所以我们应该投资构建一个能跨越所有主要操作系统的架构。我们花了一年时间来构建这个架构，然后推出了它。

    《财富》：当时它的时间表？

    扎克伯格：大概到２０１１年底的时候，我们把它推了出来。大概过了三四个月，我们觉得，“它还不错，但永远达不到我们想要的质量水准。”当时我们处在一个很艰难的处境，我们在研发上花了很长时间，但是这个世界已经再次进步了。人们可以说在重度使用Facebook应用。人们在手机和应用上花的时间有超过２０%都是在使用Facebook。所以我们觉得，我们真的还没有达到我们想要提供的质量水准。

    《财富》：你们是如何解决这个问题的？

    扎克伯格：我想说，去年的大部分时间，我们都在让公司向移动研发方向转型，而不仅仅是简单地重写应用程序。整个发布的过程也不一样。在网页上，我们只需要把代码输入服务器，桌面版差不多也是同一回事。但是如果想发布一款原生的移动应用，我们必须把所有的代码编辑到一起，然后把它提交给苹果（Apple）和它的应用商店。使用Facebook的人必须下载这个十几兆的文件。这是一种不同的做事方法。

    《财富》：那么如果出错的话，这个错误一定比以前严重得多，因为修改错误所花的时间长得多，对吗？

    扎克伯格：对，必须要等到下次发布（才能修正错误）。说我们对公司的研发流程进行了多大的转型都不夸张。它不像“现在我们要用Objective-C语言把整个东西重写一遍”那么简单，而是说，如果程序里有bug，我们必须要等一个月才能修复它。所以，得花更多的时间进行测试。到了去年年底，我们在iOS和Android上的应用获得了相对比较高的评分，但是我们的目标是提供更好的体验，远远不是仅仅针对移动设备重写一遍程序这么简单。

    《财富》：你们的目标是什么？

    扎克伯克：我们也有一系列的长期计划，它代表了在我们看来，Facebook应该在移动平台上扮演的角色。我们即将进入第三个阶段，这个阶段主要是在Android上，某种情况下也是在iOS上。它不像是在电脑网络时代，在公司刚成立后的前五年里，我们没有进行任何移动平台的开发。这几年差不多人人都在问，我们是不是会自己做手机。我们总是回答：“我们不会做手机。”然后差不多人人都会问：“那你们会不会打造自己的操作系统？”我们就会回答：“不，我们也不会做操作系统。”

    A week before Mark Zuckerberg announced the "Facebook phone," he spoke extensively to Fortune senior writer Jessi Hempel about how he's reinvented Facebook to address the huge audience of customers who access the social network on their smartphones. (The complete story of Facebook's reboot will appear in the April 29 issue of Fortune.) Here are edited excerpts of Hempel's sit-down with Facebook's 28-year-old CEO:

    Fortune: Talk about the process of becoming a mobile-oriented company.

    Zuckerberg: When the iPhone first came out, we built one of the first apps. It was called 320. The framework we built was really far ahead of everyone else. It was 2008 or so, and this design of Facebook (FB) was, you opened it up and there were all these icons inside of the app. At the time it wasn't clear the world was going to move to primarily iPhone and [Google's] Android. Blackberry (BBRY) was a really big thing, and it was still growing at the time. We knew Microsoft (MSFT) was going to do something with Windows. We thought … there were going to be maybe four or five different operating systems, so we should invest in a framework that can go across all of those. We spent a year building that out. We launched it.

    Fortune: What timeframe was this?

    Zuckerberg: By [about] the end of 2011 we were rolling it out. Within three or four months of that, we were like, "This is good, but it's never going to get us to the quality level we want." At that point we were kind of in a hole. We had been working on it for so long. And the world had progressed. People used the Facebook app a ton. More than 20% of the time that people spend on their phone and apps is in Facebook. So we were just kind of really behind in terms of the quality level we wanted to be providing.

    Fortune: So how did you solve the problem?

    Zuckerberg: I'd say most of last year was retooling the company to do mobile development, which is more than just rewriting the apps. The whole release process is different. With web, we just push code to our servers. It's the same exact thing as on desktop. Whereas if you want to release a [mobile] native app, we're going through this process of compiling all the code together and submitting it to Apple (AAPL) and these stores. The people who use the Facebook [app] have to download this ten-megabyte file. It's a different way of doing things.

    Fortune: That must make mistakes a lot bigger deal because it takes a lot longer to go in and fix things, right?

    Zuckerberg: Right, you have to wait until the whole next release. I can't overstate how much we had to retool the whole company's development processes. It wasn't just a matter of, 'OK now we're going to rewrite the whole thing in [programming language] Objective-C.' It was like, if there was a bug, we have to wait a month to fix it. So you have to spend more time testing. We kind of got to this state by the end of last year where our apps on iOS and Android were relatively highly rated; but our goal was never just to offer the same experience just kind of rewritten [for mobile].

    Fortune: What was the goal?

    Zuckerberg: We also had a series of longer-term projects, which was what we thought Facebook should be on mobile. We're about to go into this third phase, which is on Android and, at some point, [Apple's] iOS. The experiences don't look like the desktop website that we spent the first five years of the company only developing without doing any mobile development. Everyone has been asking us for years are we going to build a phone? And we're like, "No we're not going to build a phone." And then everyone's like, "Well are you going to build an operating system?" And it's like, "No we're not going to do that either."