Facebook焦头烂额，LinkedIn风景独好

    乍一看来，这样的比较简直风马牛不相及，因为从上季度来看，Facebook营收是LinkedIn的5.7倍。但请考虑以下两个因素：第一，仅仅一年前，Facebook营收还是LinkedIn的7.7倍。所以在一年的时间里，两者之前的差距已大大缩小。未来几年，Facebook将开始面临增长乏力的困扰，其增长率或将进一步下滑。

    第二，虽然LinkedIn的规模要小得多，但其每用户收入要高于Facebook。上个季度，LinkedIn的单用户月收入为1.83美元，Facebook只有1.17美元。过去一年，LinkedIn的每月活跃用户数量增长了37%，达到1,300万人，Facebook的增幅则为33%。

    可以说Facebook和LinkedIn的用户增速都比较理想。不过要说到从用户身上赚钱，LinkedIn显然更胜一筹。而投资者只需要知道：随着Facebook成长，从收入方面而言，其增长是不加选择的。Facebook主动接触那些对互相具有极大个人价值的用户，但这些用户对投资者而言却没有什么商业价值。

    而LinkedIn从每位用户身上赚到了更多的钱，尽管这些用户每个月在LinkedIn的社交网络上花的时间并没有达到8小时那么长。（有一项统计称，LinkedIn用户每月仅在该社交网络上花17分钟。）但LinkedIn充分挖掘了这些时间的商业价值——不是通过发布广告，而且通过招聘信息以及高级订阅，两者各占LinkedIn总收入的54% 和20%。展示广告和其他广告仅占LinkedIn总收入的26%。

    广告占Facebook总收入的82％。这是Facebook与LinkedIn之间的天壤之别。Facebook严重依赖广告。在从用户身上榨取广告收入这方面，Facebook比MySpace做的强得多，尽管如此，它仍是一家社交媒体网站。这意味着，在Facebook上，用户都是冲着内容来的，但他们不会点击广告。因此，通用汽车（General Motors）抛弃Facebook的消息传来后，没人感到意外。

    LinkedIn则从社交媒体网站转型为求职招聘网站。它契合了一条古老的谚语：社交媒体并非最终目标，而是一项用于特定战略的功能。为了达到这个目的，LinkedIn发掘了一个自己能深耕多年的市场，但Facebook却将几十亿美元都砸在了一个可能没有未来的平台上。（Twitter上有这么条消息：难道Facebook的成功不是建立在25岁以下的年轻人身上吗？我很想知道现在的Facebook是不是已经被说中了。）

    换句话说，如果LinkedIn是社交媒体版的书面简历，那Facebook是什么？是社交媒体版的高校自助餐厅吗？用户时刻要操心的是应该坐在哪张桌旁，谁会和自己一起进餐，又有哪些人自己不想和他进餐。

    两家网站都是大量感性化现实生活的写照。社交网站正是依靠人类情绪推动的。不过有一些情绪只属于的朦胧青春期，而另一些则来自于正在寻求自身定位的成年人。也就是说，有这么家社交网站，它的基础更接近人们成长的现实世界。

    难道Facebook上亿的社交媒体用户就不会长大成人吗？投资者们似乎认准了他们会成长。但至少在本周，投资者们将未来押在了LinkedIn上。

    本文作者凯文•凯莱赫是旧金山湾区的一位作家。欢迎随时访问他的Twitter账号cafeteria table on Twitter。

    译者：项航

    That might look like an apples-to-oranges comparison, because Facebook's revenue in the most recent quarter was 5.7 times that of LinkedIn's. But consider two things: First, that only one year earlier, Facebook's revenue was 7.7 times that of LinkedIn's. So in the space of one year, that gap has narrowed significantly. As Facebook begins to face limits to its growth in the next year or so, the ratio could shrink even more.

    And secondly, although LinkedIn is noticeably smaller, it's already getting more money from each user than Facebook. In the most recent quarter, LinkedIn took in $1.83 for every monthly user. Facebook took in $1.17. The number of LinkedIn's monthly active users grew 37% to 13 million over the past year. At Facebook, the number grew 33%.

    So the number of users are growing comparably fast on both Facebook and LinkedIn. But as they do, LinkedIn is doing a better job of getting revenue from each user. And that's all investors need to know: As Facebook grows, it grows -- from a revenue standpoint -- indiscriminately. It reaches out to users who offer much personal value to each other, but little monetary value to Facebook investors.

    LinkedIn, meanwhile, makes more money from each of its users even if they don't spend eight hours per month on its social network. (By one count, it's only 17 minutes per month.) But LinkedIn has managed to mine those precious minutes for all they're worth--– not through serving ads, but through job postings and premium subscriptions, which account for 54% and 20%, respectively, of LinkedIn revenue. Display and other ads only account for 26% of LinkedIn revenue.

    But ads account for 82% of Facebook revenue. And that's the real apples-oranges difference between Facebook and LinkedIn. Facebook relies heavily on advertising. And even though it's done a much better job of wringing ad revenue from its users than MySpace, it's still a social media company. Which means, on Facebook, people come for the content, but they don't click on the ads. That's why no one was surprised to hear that General Motors (GM) was disenchanted with Facebook.

    LinkedIn, meanwhile, turned its social network into a job-hunting and recruitment site. It took the old adage that social media isn't a destination but a feature directed at a specific strategy. In doing so, it found a market it can serve for years, while Facebook invested billions in a platform that could be irrelevant tomorrow. (This single tweet made me wonder if that wasn't already happening: Didn't Facebook build its success on listening to people under 25?)

    Put another way, LinkedIn is the social-media version of a printed-out resume. Facebook is the social media version of... what, a high-school cafeteria? Where you worry about whose table to sit at, who will eat with you and who you don't want to eat with?

    Both of those are real-life situations with a lot of emotion to them. And social networks are driven by nothing if not by human emotion. But some of those emotions are about being an adolescent, and others are about being an adult finding one's place in the world. That is, one of these social networks is more grounded in the real world where people grow up.

    Will the hundreds of millions of social media users grow up? Investors seem to be betting they will. They are – this week at least – pinning the future on LinkedIn.

    Kevin Kelleher is a writer in the San Francisco Bay Area. You are always welcome to sit at hiscafeteria table on Twitter.