Google+挑战Facebook并非“零和博弈”

    涉及社交媒体网站的流量和用户数，各方莫衷一是，很难确定哪家的数据更准确。例如，Facebook声称有8亿“活跃用户”，但我知道很多人——包括我自己在内——不止有一个账户。因此，Facebook或许有8亿活跃账号，但其用户数量不可能真的接近10亿人，要知道，全球总共也就68亿人。

    而Google+的用户数则更模糊清楚。因为谷歌（Google）自己近来没有透露其用户数量，我们只能依第三方的数字。但有证据显示，谷歌开发的这款旨在与Facebook一争高下的产品正在迅猛发展。家谱网站Ancestry.com的创始人保罗•艾伦称自己是Google+的“非官方统计员” 艾伦提供了一个乐观的预测：Google+到年底将拥有4亿用户。艾伦表示，目前，Google+的用户数仅略高于6,000万。艾伦估计Google+的全部用户中，有近四分之一去年12月份注册的，表明Google+增速惊人，而他本人是据此做出上述预测的。

    一些观察人士称，Google+的增速实际上更高。谷歌最近一次公布官方数据是在10月份，当时，该公司首席执行官拉里•佩奇表示，Google+拥有4,000万用户。除此之外，该公司未给出其他任何信息，比如这些用户数是如何统计的：是每月活跃用户数？该数字是否包括已经完成注册但从未使用该服务的用户？

    不过如果Google+真的能达到艾伦所估计的用户数，那么有助于这家搜索巨头扭转今年的颓势：总体而言，谷歌在独立访问量上仍然遥遥领先于其它网站，但从用户停留的时间来看，Facebook已将谷歌的所有服务抛在身后，就连搜索和YouTube也不例外。按照用户停留时间计算，Facebook比谷歌、YouTube、雅虎（Yahoo）和美国在线（AOL）四家网站的总和还多。所以，谷歌现在向社交媒体投入重金也就不足为奇了。不过恐怕已经为时太晚。

    但是，谷歌仍然不容轻视。Google+和Facebook的竞争经常被看作是“零和博弈”，即一方的胜利必须以击败另一方为前提。但两家公司最终共存也并非不可能，他们能互相竞争（再加上Twitter）用户和广告商。两家公司的用户群体有很大程度的重叠，而这种情况很可能会持续下去。不难想象，为了迎合不同的广告商，两家公司会发布不同口径的用户统计数。也许Google+最终会成为汇聚互联网专业、技术和创意人才的平台，而Facebook会继续成长为网络主流用户的平台。最终，Google+的用户数和流量会相对较少，但“每千次展示成本”（CPM）会相对较高。

    无论如何，上文所说的只是一种可能。Facebook目前面临着一大风险：它添加了Ticker等不少令人反感的功能；在不经意间刺探用户隐私；而且不停地对网站进行改版，最近Facebook对网站数次大动干戈，随着时间轴的加入，改版行动总算告一段落，这样的举动越频繁，Facebook就越可能失去大量用户，从而动摇其根本。一旦用户在Google+上的好友数越多，Google+的新功能越多，他们从Facebook转投前者的成本也就越低，或者他们至少可以再开通一个Google+账号，而将Facebook打入冷宫。

    Facebook预计将在今年进行首次公开募股，之后投资者注入的数十亿美元资金将任由其支配，一不留神，该网站可能会开始混日子。Facebook最好用这些钱改进服务，并与更多的媒体和游戏公司合作，以增加该网站的功能，即致力于增加Facebook对用户的吸引力。

    注：“零和博弈(zero-sum game)”又称“零和游戏”，与非零和博弈相对，是博弈论的一个概念，属非合作博弈，指参与博弈的各方，在严格竞争下，一方的收益必然意味着另一方的损失，博弈各方的收益和损失相加总和永远为“零”。也就是说，双方不存在合作的可能。

    译者：项航

    Whenever the subject of traffic or membership on social-media sites comes up, a caveat should be offered: it's really difficult to tell which numbers to believe, if any. Facebook claims 800 million "active users," but I know lots of people -- myself included -- who have more than one account. So, active accounts, maybe. But the number of users is not likely to really be approaching 1 billion of Earth's 6.8 billion inhabitants.

    The numbers are even murkier when it comes to Google Plus. Since Google (GOOG) hasn't disclosed its own numbers lately, we must rely on those from outside observers. But the evidence suggests that Google's answer to Facebook is growing fast. Paul Allen, the founder of Ancestry.com who calls himself an "unofficial statistician" for Google Plus, offers an optimistic prediction: that Google Plus will have 400 million users by year's end. Right now, it has just over 60 million, he says. He bases his prediction on his claim that nearly a quarter of all of Google Plus's users signed up in December, indicating a rather breathtaking rate of growth.

    Some observers say Google Plus's growth rate is actually higher than that. The last official word from Google itself came in October, when CEO Larry Page said Google Plus had 40 million users. The company didn't give any more information than that, such as how those users were counted: Active monthly users? Did it include people who signed up for the service but have never used it?

    But if Google Plus really does reach Allen's estimate for this year, it would turn around what is a troubling trend for the search giant: as a whole, the company is still ahead of everybody in terms of unique visits, but it's being crushed by Facebook in terms of time spent on any given Google property, such as search and YouTube. By that metric, Facebook beats Google, YouTube, Yahoo (YHOO) and AOL (AOL) combined. No wonder Google is putting so much money and effort into social media. Too bad it happened so late.

    Still, Google is not easily dismissed. Too often, Google Plus vs. Facebook is presented as a zero-sum game, as if the success of one must result in the downfall of the other. But there's no reason that they can't both thrive, competing with each other (and with Twitter, et al) for users and ad dollars. They share many of the same users now, and that will likely continue to be the case. It's easy to imagine them each claiming different demographics to appeal to different advertisers. Perhaps Google Plus will end up being the network of professionals, techies and creative types, while Facebook continues on as the network of the mainstream. Maybe Google Plus will end up with fewer members and less traffic, but higher CPMs.

    Anyway, that's one scenario. One big risk for Facebook in what is fast becoming a real competition is that it will lose more members the more often it creates obnoxious features like the Ticker, carelessly invades users' privacy, or radically revamps the site, as it has done several times recently, culminating in the new Timeline feature. The more friends someone has on Google Plus, and the more features that site adds, the lower the cost to users of switching over from Facebook, or at least of adding Google Plus and going to Facebook less often.

    Unless it is careful, Facebook will, if anything, be more prone to muck about with the site once it has billions of dollars of the investing public's money at its disposal after its expected IPO this year. Better Facebook should use the cash to improve service and make deals with more media and gaming companies to add to the site's features. That is, to work on making it more attractive to users rather than less so.