Friending the World, With Nothing Lost in Translation
By MIGUEL HELFT
(資料來源： 聯合新聞網紐時周報精選 )

Facebook, the social network service that started in a Harvard University dormitory just six years ago, is growing at a dizzying rate around the globe, surging to nearly 500 million users, from 200 million users 15 months ago.

It is pulling even with Googleowned Orkut in India, where only a year ago, Orkut was more than twice as large as Facebook. In the last year, Facebook has grown eightfold, to eight million users, in Brazil, where Orkut has 28 million.

In country after country, Facebook is displacing other social networks. In Britain, Facebook made the formerly popular Bebo all but irrelevant, forcing AOL to sell the site at a huge loss two years after it bought it for $850 million. In Germany, Facebook surpassed Studi- VZ, which until February was the dominant social network there.

Just over two years ago, Facebook was available only in English. Still, nearly half of its users were outside the United States, and its presence was strong in Britain, Australia and other English- speaking countries.

With nearly two-thirds of all Internet users in the United States signed up on Facebook, the company has focused on international expansion.

The task of expanding the site overseas fell on Javier Olivan, a 33-year-old Spaniard . Mr. Olivan led an innovative effort to have Facebook users translate the site into more than 80 languages. Other Web sites and technology companies had used volunteers.

The task was immense. Facebook not only encouraged users to translate parts of the site, but also let other users fine-tune those translations or pick among multiple translations. Nearly 300,000 users participated.

“Nobody had done it at the scale that we were doing it,” Mr. Olivan said.

The effort paid off. Now about 70 percent of Facebook's users are outside the United States. The number of users more than tripled in Mexico, to 11 million, and it more than quadrupled in Germany, to 19 million.

With every new translation, Facebook pushed into a new country or region, and its spread often mirrored the ties between nations or the movement of people across borders. After becoming popular in Italy, for example, Facebook spread to the Italian-speaking portions of Switzerland. When Facebook began to gain momentum in Brazil, the activity was most intense in southern parts of the country that border on neighboring Argentina, where Facebook was already popular.

“It's a mapping of the real world,” Mr. Olivan said.

With his typical self-confidence, Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's 26-year-old chief executive, recently said it was “almost guaranteed” that the company would reach a billion users.

“They have been more innovative than any other social network, and they are going to continue to grow,” said Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst with the Altimeter Group, an advisory firm. “Facebook wants to be ubiquitous, and they are being successful for now.”

Facebook is not popular everywhere. The site is largely blocked in China. And with fewer than a million users each in Japan, South Korea and Russia, it lags behind home-grown social networks in those major markets.

Facebook recently sent some of its best engineers to a new office in Tokyo, where they are fine-tuning searches so they work with all three Japanese scripts. In South Korea, the site is working with network operators to ensure distribution of its service.

“I think that Facebook is winning for two reasons,” said Bing Gordon, a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and a board member of Zynga, the maker of popular Facebook games. Mr. Gordon said that Facebook had hired some of the best engineers in Silicon Valley.

“They have opened up a platform, and they have the best apps on that platform,” Mr. Gordon said.

The rapid ascent of Facebook has no company more worried than Google. The billions of links posted by users on Facebook have turned the social network into an important driver of users to sites across the Web. That has been Google's role.

Google has tried to break into social networking, but none of its initiatives have made a dent in Facebook.

Google makes its money from advertising, and even here, Facebook poses a challenge.

“There is nothing more threatening to Google than a company that has 500 million subscribers and knows a lot about them and places targeted advertisements in front of them,” said Todd Dagres, a partner at Spark Capital, a venture firm that has invested in Twitter and other social networking companies. “For every second that people are on Facebook and for every ad that Facebook puts in front of their face, it is one less second they are on Google and one less ad that Google puts in front of their face.”

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臉書全球擴展　翻譯無漏失

陳世欽 　譯

臉書是6年前才誕生於哈佛大學一間學生宿舍的社交網站，目前正以令人目眩神搖的速度在全球各地擴張，15個月前的使用者大約是2億人，如今已經激增至將近5億人。

臉書相繼在一個個國家取代了其他社交網站的地位。在英國，美國線上公司當初以8億5000萬美元的高價買下相當熱門的社交網站Bebo，如今臉書已使Bebo變得無足輕重，也迫使美國線上公司在兩年之後賠了大錢將Bebo脫手。在今年2月之前，StudiVZ一直是德國首屈一指的社交網站，如今也已被 臉書後來居上。

2年多前，臉書當時還只有英文版，卻有接近半數的用戶住在美國以外的地區，而且大多集中於英國、澳洲及其他英語國家。

有鑑於美國網際網路使用者將近三分之二已在臉書上註冊，臉書遂積極向美國以外的地區延伸觸角。

向海外拓展這個網站的任務，落在33歲的西班牙人哈維耶．奧利文的身上。奧利文負責主持創新規畫，邀請臉書用戶將這個微網誌翻譯成80多種語文。其他網站及科技業者過去也曾發動自願參與者來從事一些工作。

這項工程堪稱浩大。臉書不只鼓勵用戶翻譯網站上的部分內容，也允許其他用戶修飾這些譯文，或者從多種翻譯版本中挑選出最適用者。參與其事的用戶將近30萬人。

奧利文表示：「這項工程規模堪稱空前。」

努力沒有白費。如今，約70%的臉書用戶住在美國以外的地區。墨西哥的用戶增加至原來的3倍多，總數達到1100萬人，德國用戶更是增至4倍多，達到1900萬人。

臉書挾著每一種新翻譯的文字打入一個新國家或地區，擴張的過程通常足以反映國與國之間的關係或各國人民跨界來往的概況。舉例而言，在受到義大利人的歡迎之 後，臉書接著又打進了瑞士境內的義大利語區。當臉書開始在巴西站穩腳步時，它在毗鄰阿根廷的巴西南部地區獲得最熱烈的迴響。而在此之前，臉書在阿根廷已經 非常風行。

奧利文說：「這是繪製真實世界的圖像。」

年僅26歲的臉書執行長馬克．沙克柏格最近以他慣有的自信口吻表示，「幾乎可以掛保證」，臉書的全球用戶一定可以達到10億人。

顧問公司「測高儀集團」分析師耶利米．歐陽表示：「他們始終比其他社交網站更有創意，而且一定能夠持續成長。無所不在是臉書追求的主要目標之一。直到目前為止，他們非常成功。」

臉書也不是到處都吃得開。它在中國大陸遭到封殺，在日本、南韓、俄羅斯等地的用戶也都不到100萬人，落後於這些主要市場的本土社交網站。

臉書最近將它部分最優秀的工程師送到東京的一處新辦公室，使他們得以就近改進搜索功能，讓日文的3種書寫體都能適用。在南韓，臉書也已經開始與網路營運者合作，以確保分配它提供的服務。

柯伯高拜創投公司合夥人兼臉書熱門遊戲製造商Zynga董事戈登表示：「我認為，臉書無往不利的主要原因有2個。」他指出，臉書聘用一些最優秀的矽谷工程師。

臉書迅速竄起，最感憂心的莫過於谷歌了。臉書用戶進行無數連結，已使它成為驅策用戶悠遊網路世界的重要力量。而這一直是谷歌扮演的角色。

谷歌一直試圖打入網路社交領域，然而始終無法搖動臉書分毫。

谷歌的收入來自廣告。即使在這一方面，臉書也已經對谷歌構成了挑戰。

「史巴克資本」創投公司對推特及其他社交網站挹注資金，合夥人達格芮斯表示：「一家用戶高達5億人，對用戶知之甚詳，同時針對用戶量身訂作廣告的企業，對 谷歌造成最嚴峻的挑戰。只要網友進入臉書待上一秒鐘，臉書在他們面前打上一則廣告，就等於他們在谷歌上少待了一秒鐘，谷歌也失去了在他們面前秀出一則廣告 的機會。」

(http://mag.udn.com/mag/campus/storypage.jsp?f_MAIN_ID=381&f_SUB_ID=3731&f_ART_ID=261975)