欧洲科技创业方兴未艾

你预计在大数据领域的创业活动会更活跃吗？

    从上世纪80年代开始，全世界人均科技存储信息能力几乎每40个月就会翻番；截至2012年，每天有2.5百亿亿字节(2.5×1018) 的数据生成。它带来了一个全新的领域，包括如何存储、处理、挖掘、分析和利用这么多数据。我个人认为，大数据领域需要的创新太多了。

    有意思的是，Facebook除了能让用户及时了解到朋友的宠物刚刚过世和其他爆炸性社交新闻外，它为这个世界做出的一项最重要贡献是Facebook作为一家公司处理大数据的能力，以及Facebook开放了手头所有大数据技术的源代码，给这个世界做出的贡献。很多公司，像如今已是世界最大WiFi网络的Fon都可以获益于这些投资，也全部开放源代码。

    开放源代码是一种合作理念，基本上发端于欧洲，后来得到了全球的追随，如今全球一些最大的社交媒体公司大多数后台都在运行开放源代码软件。这一点可以理解，如果你的数据库是私有的，如果你是唯一一家对用户和客户设有密匙的公司。为什么不开放所有技术的源代码，让所有这些都能发挥作用？开放源代码是一种合作理念，但实施开放源代码本质上是非常资本主义的。像我在Index Ventures的投资伙伴以及其他很多投资者已大举退出MySQL这样的大数据公司。

    大数据结合开放源代码方式将产生重大的创新，创造可观的价值。

最后一个问题，Facebook在欧洲的普及率很高，在亚洲也在取得进展。你对它的商业模式和扩张能力有什么看法？企业增速看来已经放缓，有些广告客户说，Facebook广告不如搜索引擎广告有效。

    Facebook现在的状况就像2004年的谷歌，能盈利但还不能大量盈利。Facebook需要微调广告模式，它当前的广告模式相当粗糙，不是不好，但还处在早期阶段。我不认为现在是买进Facebook股票的好时机，因为大量内部人士的卖盘还在持续。但买进时机很快就会到来。我不认为Facebook是明日黄花。马克•扎克伯格是当今的天才CEO之一，Facebook将继续走下去。扎克伯格有能力破解下一个难题，也就是移动平台的货币化。

    译者：早稻米

Do you see more startup activity in big data?

    The world's technological per-capita capacity to store information has roughly doubled every 40 months since the 1980s; as of 2012, every day 2.5 quintillion (2.5×1018) bytes of data were created. This has led to a whole new field which deals with how do we store, process, mine, analyze, and make use of so much data. Personally I see big data as an area in which a lot of innovation is needed.

    Interestingly one of the most significant contributions of Facebook to the world, other than learning that your friend's pet just died and other shocking social news, is the ability of Facebook as a company to process big data and the contributions that Facebook has made for the world by open sourcing all the big data technologies it uses. Companies like Fon, now the largest WiFi network in the world, can piggyback on these investments and be all open source.

    Open source is a cooperative idea and mostly European invention that the whole world has tagged along and now most of the back offices of the largest social media companies in the world are run with open source software. And it makes sense, if your database is proprietary, if you are the only one with the key to your users and customers. Why not open source all the technology that makes it all work? But while open source is cooperative idea, the implementations of open source are very capitalist in nature. Investors like my partners at Index Ventures and many others have had significant exits on big data companies like MySQL.

    Big data combined with an open source approach will lead to significant innovations and massive value creation.

Finally, Facebook now has deep coverage in Europe and is growing in Asia as well. What are your thoughts on it business model and its ability to scale? Growth seems to be slowing and some advertisers say that FB ads are not as effective as search ads.

    FB is now where Google was in 2004, profitable but not yet hugely profitable. FB needs to tweak its advertising model which so far is pretty rudimentary, not bad, but an early stage. I don't think it's time yet to buy FB shares because of the tremendous amount of insider selling that has been taking place. But soon the time will come. I don't think Facebook is a passing fad. Mark Zuckerberg is one of the genius CEOs of this era and FB is here to stay. Zuckerberg will crack the next piece of the puzzle which is how to monetize mobile platforms.