Facebook在2017将面临何种挑战？

Facebook首席执行官兼创始人马克·扎克伯格。

2016年已经过去，社交网站Facebook形势大好。公司营业收入达到250亿美元且增长强劲，用户已达17亿，股价也涨到前所未有的高位。然而，Facebook在2016年的辉煌战绩将在今年变成挑战。

一言以蔽之，在成为有史以来最大社交媒体之后，Facebook必须想办法保持增长，尤其需要维持广告收入增长。连Facebook自己也承认，如今新闻信息流中已经满是广告。

Facebook已明确表示，视频是社交网络的未来，因此视频广告显然是Facebook下一步重点。但出于种种原因，视频广告业务还存在问题，这可能是Facebook尚未推出的原因。

视频广告市场看上去形势喜人，可许多分析师认为泡沫即将破裂。没有人会关注视频播放前的贴片广告。如果视频正片也只有几秒，不论是播放前还是播放中途插入的广告都很难说有价值。直播视频流也很难做到在完全不打扰观众的前提下插入广告。

种种问题很可能只会越发严重，因为Facebook上仍然在涌现大量短视频和直播视频。稍微懂一点经济学就能明白，供应激增只有一个显而易见的后果：价格大跌。

期望视频业务增长的新生代科技企业不只Facebook一家。谷歌旗下的YouTube希望在守住市场领头羊地位的同时继续开拓业务，意味着供应进一步增加，对价格施加压力。Snapchat的工作重心也放在和Facebook正面交锋上，所以Instagram总是推出跟Snapchat几乎完全相同的功能。

迈入2017年，Facebook不得不想办法解决一些关键问题。目前Facebook押宝未来是视频的天下，也确实有称霸视频领域的财力，但竞争者都很强劲，而且远比Facebook熟悉视频业务。有时候，大手笔花钱不一定能保证成功。

种种挑战是否意味着2017年Facebook的股价会暴跌？难说。不过上市公司讲述成长故事时，投资者总是更喜欢挑毛病。尽管社交网络巨头的资产负债表看起来很美，Facebook仍需努力。（财富中文网）

译者：Pessy

审校：夏林

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer and founder of Facebook Inc.

As 2016 draws to a close, Facebook looks to be in a pretty fantastic spot. Revenues are at $25 billion and growing strongly—as is the company's 1.7 billion user base—and the stock has never been higher. And yet, all of that greatness sums up the social network's challenge for 2017.

In a nutshell, Facebook (fb) has to figure out how to keep growing when it is already the largest company of its kind that has ever existed. In particular, it needs to find a way to keep its advertising revenues increasing when even Facebook itself admits that the average news feed is already as full of ads as it can possibly get.

Video ads are the next obvious frontier for Facebook to conquer, especially because the company has made it clear that video is the future of the social network. But video advertising is problematic for a number of reasons, which is probably why Facebook hasn't introduced it yet.

Although the video-ad market still seems healthy enough, many analysts believe it is a bubble waiting to pop. Virtually no one watches pre-roll ads, and both pre- and mid-roll ads are difficult to justify when a video clip is only a few seconds long. Live streams are also hard to insert ads into without losing the intended audience completely.

These problems are only likely to get worse as Facebook continues to flood the market with short-form and live-streaming video. Simple economics suggests that that kind of explosion of supply will produce one obvious outcome: Namely, a dramatic decline in prices.

And Facebook isn't alone in wanting to grow in video. YouTube wants to not only defend its market-leading position but expand it, and that means more supply and pressure on pricing. Snapchat is also focused on going head-to-head with Facebook, which helps explain why Instagram keeps launching features that are essentially identical to Snapchat's.

As we head into 2017, these are some of the key issues for which Facebook will have to come up with a solution. It has staked its future on video, and it has the deep pockets that will be required to prevail—but its competitors are strong in areas that Facebook isn't. And having a lot of money to throw at a problem doesn't always result in success.

Does any of this mean that Facebook's stock will nosedive in 2017? Hardly. But investors are always looking for weak spots in a company's growth story, and despite the rosy picture that its balance sheet paints, the social-networking giant still has some work to do.