|
- UID
- 84227
- 帖子
- 28
- 精华
- 0
- 积分
- 15
- 积累
- 0 点
- 现金
- 55 GBP
- 原创译作
- 12 篇
- 本周之星
- 0 次
- 来源
- 搜索引擎
- 在线时间
- 22 小时
- 注册时间
- 2009-12-25
- {zh1}登录
- 2010-2-7
|
本帖{zh1}由 translating 于 2010-2-7 09:45 编辑
Towards a socialised state
走向社会化国度
The joy of unlimited communication
沟通无限的乐趣
Jan 28th 2010
From The Economist print edition
Illustration by Ian Whadcock
WHAT will the future of social networking look like? Imagine this: your digital video recorder automatically copies a television show that several of your friends were talking about on a social network before the show went on air. Or this: you get into your car, switch on its navigation system and ask it to guide you to a friend’s house. As you pull out of the driveway, the network to which you both belong automatically alerts her that you are on your way. And this: as you are buying a pair of running shoes that you think one of your friends might be interested in, you can send a picture to their network page with a couple of clicks on a keypad next to the checkout counter.
未来的社交网络将是怎样的呢？想象一下：您的几个朋友在某个电视节目播出之前正在社交网络上对之加以评论，（一旦开播）您的数字录像机就会自动将它复制下来。或者：您坐进自己的汽车，打开车载导航系统，让系统引导您到一个朋友的家。在您从私宅短道出来， 刚刚转进马路的时候，你们两位共属的网络就自动将您正在路上这个消息通知她。还有这个：您在买一双跑鞋时，想到自己的朋友中可能有人会对这双跑鞋感兴趣。在收银台旁边的小键盘上按两三个键，您就可以向他们的网页发送一张照片。
Networking types like to talk about the idea that there is a pervasive social element in all of the things people interact with. Listen to them long enough and you come away with the impression that your teapot will soon be twittering about what you had for breakfast. Some of the ideas outlined above may sound farfetched, but a service such as Facebook Connect, which already lets people export their social graph of online relationships to other web-enabled gizmos, suggests they are not completely outlandish. Everything from cars to cookers could ultimately have social connectivity embedded in it.
爱交际的人喜欢谈论这样的观点：在人们打交道的所有东西中都渗透着社会要素。听他们说多了，您离开时会觉得自己的茶壶很快就会叽叽喳喳谈论您早餐吃的东西。上文所述的一些想法可能听来不大可信，但“脸谱互联”（Facebook Connect）等服务已经让人们能将自己的网上关系社交图输出到其它有网络功能的小玩意。这些服务表明这些想法不是怪到没边的。从汽车到厨具的一切东西最终都会有社交联系功能嵌入其中。
But when it comes to helping social networks achieve ubiquity, none of these things will be remotely as important as the mobile phone. Using a web-enabled phone to post status updates and send messages is still a niche activity in many countries, but it will rapidly become a mainstream one as mobile-broadband services overtake fixed-line ones in a few years’ time. One estimate by eMarketer suggests that just over 600m people will use their phones to tap into social networks by 2013, a more-than-fourfold increase on last year’s 140m.
但谈及帮助社交网络实现无处不在的目标时，这些东西都远远没有移动电话重要。在许多国家，使用具备网络功能的电话更新近况、发送消息，仍然是小众的活动，但随着移动宽带服务在几年内赶上固网服务，它很快就会成为主流的活动。eMarketer的一项估计表明到2013年，略多于6亿的人将使用自己的电话接入社交网络，较去年的1.4亿人增长了3倍多。
Dial-a-pal
电话交友
This shift has big implications. For a start, mobile phones in emerging markets—or devices such as cheap netbooks linked to the internet via mobile networks—will open up a brand new audience whose use of social sites has so far been hampered by a frustrating lack of fast, PC-based internet connections. Companies such as Sembuse in Kenya, which bills itself as east Africa’s first mobile social network, and South Africa’s Mxit are already gearing up to connect millions more people to one another through their mobile phones, providing a big fillip to the amount of information-sharing going on around the world.
这种变化有很大意义。首先，新兴市场的移动电话——或通过移动网络连接互联网的廉价上网本等设备——将赢得全新的爱好者。这些爱好者由于缺乏速度快捷的基于个人电脑的互联网连接途径，所以他们对社交网络的使用过去一直受到妨碍， 令人沮丧。一些公司——像宣称自己是非洲{sg}移动社交网络的肯尼亚Sembuse公司和南非的Mxit公司——已经准备好将数百万人通过他们的移动电话相互联系起来，极大地刺激全世界的信息共享。
The rise of mobile-phone-based networking will have an impact on rich-world markets too. Thanks to fast and relatively cheap mobile broadband services, phones have already become the device of choice for accessing some sites in Asia. Shigeya Kawagishi, an executive at Mixi, one of Japan’s largest social networks with 18m members, says the vast majority of its traffic now comes from phone-toting customers who check in to get updates four or five times a day (see chart 7). Facebook, which has some 65m mobile users, says they are almost half as active again on the site as other folk.
基于移动电话的网络兴起，也会影响富裕地区市场。在亚洲，归功于快速、相对廉价的移动宽带服务，电话已经成为访问一些网站的{sx}设备。Mixi是日本{zd0}的社交网络之一，拥有1800万会员。其高管川岸茂也（Shigeya Kawagishi）称该网站的绝大多数流量现在来自电话用户，他们每天登录四、五次来获取更新（见图7）。拥有约6500万移动用户的脸谱网（Facebook）称他们在网站上的活跃程度几乎是其他群体的一倍半。
On location
实地跟踪
This trend towards mobile usage is fuelling speculation that the next big thing will be geo-networking apps, which use virtual data to broker real-world encounters. These apps encourage the serendipity that Twitter’s Mr Stone talks about by allowing people to use their mobiles to signal where they are to friends who may be nearby. Several start-ups such as Foursquare and Gowalla are building businesses around this idea and
Twitter plans to do so too. Asking people to add their whereabouts to their tweets, the firm hopes, will enable it to use these data to direct advertising and other services at people as they move from place to place.
这种走向移动应用的趋势刺激了这样一种推测：下一件大发明将是地球网络应用软件——这些软件使用虚拟数据来居中实现现实世界的邂逅。这些应用软件推崇推特网（Twitter）斯通（Stone）先生所说的意外惊喜——人们可以通过这些软件，使用自己的移动电话向可能正在附近的朋友发送信息，告诉他们自己在哪里。几家新兴公司——比如Foursquare公司和Gowalla公司——正以这个主意为中心发展业务，而推特网也计划这么做。这家公司请人们将行踪添加到微型帖子（tweet）中，希望这样做能让它使用这些数据，来将广告和其它服务导向行踪改变的人们。
To some, the idea of a technology that can arrange chance meetings with their friends will seem like a dream come true. To others, the thought of being tracked from place to place is a nightmarish prospect that has a Big Brother feel about it. To people who run social networks, location-based networking is a logical extension of their efforts to humanise technology and harness it to the cause of greater global openness.
能安排自己与朋友机缘巧遇的技术，对于一些人来说简直像是梦想成真。而对于另一些人，被随时随地跟踪是噩梦般的前景，给以人受“老大哥”监视之感。经营社交网络的人努力实现科技以人为本，利用技术完成更大程度全球开放的事业；对于他们而言，基于位置的网络是这些努力的合理延伸。
The networks’ founders seem to have an almost Utopian belief in the benefits that their creations will deliver. Facebook’s Mr Zuckerberg, for example, describes the greater openness he believes his firm and others like it are bringing to human interactions as “probably the greatest transformative force in our generation, absent a major war.” Mr Stone, for his part, reckons Twitter “is something important that has the potential to change the world, though we have a long way to go.”
在他们的创造能够带来的好处上，这些网络的创始人看来持一种近乎乌托邦的信念。例如脸谱网的扎克伯格（Zuckerberg）先生认为他的公司和其他类似公司正使人类的交往变得更加开放，他将这种更高的开放程度描述成“可能是我们这一代除战争之外最强大的变革力量。”斯通先生个人认为推特网“是重要的事物，拥有改变世界的潜力，尽管我们还有很长的路要走。”
Much the same sort of thing was said about the internet when it first emerged. But it was also met with a great deal of scepticism by those who thought the web could never be used to make money, and from bosses who assumed that workers would use it simply to watch pornography and play online poker. The sceptics were astonished when it went on to produce corporate powerhouses such as Amazon and Google, and provided businesses with remarkable new tools for boosting productivity and generating fresh ideas.
互联网刚刚出现的时候，也有人说过类似的话。但那时互联网也遭到很多怀疑。持怀疑态度的有认为互联网永远也无法用来赚钱的人，也有臆断工人只会用互联网来浏览xx信息和在线打xx的老板。当互联网开始缔造亚马逊和谷歌等强大企业时，当互联网为企业提供非凡的新工具用于提高生产率和产生新点子时，怀疑者震惊了。
The parallels with social networks are striking. That should come as no surprise, because those networks too are creatures of the internet and the ultimate expression of what its founding father, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, wanted it to be. In his book “Weaving the Web” Sir Tim explained that the internet was always meant to be more of a social creation than a technical one. The ultimate goal, he wrote, was to come up with something that, first and foremost, would make it easier for people to collaborate with one another.
社交网络惊人相似。相似本应在意料之中，因为这些网络也是互联网的产物，而且是互联网之父蒂姆•伯纳斯•李（Tim Berners-Lee）先生心目中理想的互联网的最终表现。在他的《编织万维网》一书中，蒂姆先生解释说，互联网一直都不仅仅是一种技术性创造，更是一种社会性创造。他写道，最终的目标是发明出某种事物，它的首要用途就是让人们更易于彼此协作。
This special report has argued that social networks have already done much to achieve that goal. They have created trusted online venues where people can meet up using their real identities. They have provided firms with new ways to reach their customers and those who influence them. They have reduced friction in the labour market by allowing employers and prospective employees to connect more easily than ever before. And they have speeded up the flow of information within companies.
本专题报道认为社交网络已经为实现这个目标做出很大贡献。它们创造了可以信赖的在线场所。在这些场所，人们可以使用真实身份邂逅彼此。社交网络为企业提供了新的方式来接触他们的客户、接触影响企业的各方。社交网络使雇主和潜在员工能比以前更方便地联系，从而减少了劳务市场上的摩擦。社交网络还加速了信息在企业内部的流动。
All of these are impressive achievements. But arguably the most important contribution that the sites have made is to offer a free and immensely powerful set of communication and collaboration tools to everyone on Earth who has access to a broadband internet connection. This democratisation of technology is driving the socialisation of the web and fundamentally changing the way that people interact with one another, as well as with businesses and governments.
所有这些都是令人钦佩的成就。但这些网站做出的{zd0}贡献是为地球上能够使用宽带互联网的每个人提供了一套免费且xx强大的沟通、合作工具，虽然这种说法尚有争议。这种技术的民主化正在推动网络的社会化，并从根本上改变人与人、人与企业、人与政府之间的互动方式。
It has also made it easy for anyone to form a globe-spanning discussion group of their own with just a few clicks of a mouse. Not so long ago that would have been the preserve of an elite group of companies and institutions which had the necessary financial and technical clout to perform such feats. Now, thanks to the technology created by Facebook and its peers, millions of these conversations can take place simultaneously with the greatest of ease. The world is better off for it.
而且由于技术的民主化，任何人只要点几下鼠标，就能很容易地组织全球化的讨论组。而不久以前，能做到这一点的只有精英团体——拥有做出此等壮举所必需的财务和技术能力的公司和机构。现在，归功于脸谱网及其同行创造的技术，数以百万计的这种交流活动可以极其容易地同时进行。世界因此更美好。 |
|
