Business | Pay as you post

商业 | 按“贴”收费

Facebook sells subscriptions as the ad business stumbles

广告收入增长乏力，脸书推出付费用户服务

Meta joins Twitter and Snap in introducing a paid tier

紧随推特和Snap其后，Meta也开始推出付费服务

“It’s free and always will be,” Facebook vowed on its landing page for nearly a decade. The world’s largest social network still is. But from this week its users and those of its sister app, Instagram, will have the option of paying $11.99 a month for a “verified” account, buying them better customer service, more widely distributed posts and a blue badge next to their name.

“免费使用，永不收费”，过去十年间，Facebook一直将这条承诺打在其登陆页面上。虽然目前使用这个世界上最大的社交网络仍然是免费的，但从本周开始，Facebook及其姐妹应用Instagram的用户将可以选择每月支付11.99美元，获得“认证”账号，获得更好的顾客服务，他们的帖子也会得到更有力的推送，用户名旁边会有一个蓝色的认证徽章。

The subscription is the latest example of a growing trend. Last June Snapchat, a messaging app popular among 20-somethings, launched a $3.99 plan called Snapchat+. In December Twitter relaunched Twitter Blue, an $8-per-month service. Like Meta’s offering, both offer an assortment of perks, the most significant being a more prominent place for the user’s posts in the feeds of others.

推出订阅服务体现了一个最新趋势。去年6月，颇受年轻人欢迎的Snapchat推出订阅服务Snapchat+，每月收费3.99美元。12月，推特则重新推出了Twitter Blue，定价为8美元/月。和Meta一样，Snapchat和Twitter的订阅服务都提供了各种各样的好处，其中最重要的是使订阅用户的帖子出现在其他用户推送页面更显眼的位置。

It is hardly surprising that ad-supported networks are looking to diversify their sources of revenue. After years of non-stop growth the online-advertising business has hit a speed bump. The great one-off shift of ad budgets from offline locations, like newspapers, to the web is mostly complete. And since 2021 mobile advertising has been hampered by anti-tracking rules pioneered by Apple, which make it harder for apps like Facebook to target ads and measure their effectiveness.

靠广告收入支撑的互联网公司开始追求营收多样化不足为奇。经历多年不断发展，在线广告业如今增长出现放缓。广告投放由纸媒等传统媒介转向数字媒介的进程已经基本完成。2021年苹果公司率先采取的反追踪措施增加了Facebook等APP精准投放广告以及衡量广告效率的难度。

The results have been painful. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has reported falling revenue in each of the past three quarters. Despite a recent rally its stock is trading at less than half the value at its peak in 2021. Snap, which owns Snapchat, has lost nearly 90% of its market value in the same period. Twitter, which was bought last October by Elon Musk, a mercurial self-styled “technoking”, is “trending to breakeven” having previously faced bankruptcy, its owner tweeted this month.

（反追踪法的实施）带来了阵痛。过去三个季度，Facebook母公司Meta的营收一路下滑。尽管近期股市回春，但其股价还不到2021年峰值的一半。同期，Snapchat母公司Snap市值下跌近90%。本月，埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）在推特上写道：Twitter“即将实现盈亏平衡”。而Twitter此前一度濒临破产。（去年十月，马斯克将Twitter收入囊中，这位机智多变的企业家自称“技术之王”。）

注释：

results n.pl :the amount of a company's sales, profit, etc. during a particular period via Cambridge.dictionary

Subscriptions are no substitute for ads. Snap said on February 17th that 2.5m people had signed up to Snapchat+, less than 1% of its app’s 375m daily users. That implies annual subscription sales of no more than $120m, or less than 3% of Snap’s total revenue last year. Though Twitter has not said how many have joined Blue (its entire press office seems to have been sacked), a recent leak put the figure at below 300,000. The product remains a work in progress, with promised features such as fewer ads still billed as “coming soon”. On February 17th Twitter adopted a new approach to driving sign-ups, announcing that two-factor authentication by text message, a security feature, would shortly be turned off for those who don’t cough up.

付费用户带来的营收无法取代广告。2月17日，Snap表示，Snapchat+的订阅人数已达250万，不足其3.75亿日活跃用户的1%。这意味着年订阅销售额还不足1.2亿美元，连Snap去年总营收的3%都没有。尽管Twitter并未透露Twitter Blue的订阅人数（好像整个Twitter新闻办都被炒鱿鱼了），但最近有小道消息称订阅人数不足30万。该服务还在不断优化中，但一些一直宣传的功能，如减少广告等，依旧是“即将上线”。2月17日，Twitter采用了一种新的方式来吸引用户订阅：仅有付费用户才能开启短信双重验证。

注释：

cough up: to produce or present something, such as an amount of money.

Meta says its offering is aimed at “creators”, who use its platforms for work and might be most willing to pay for verification and extra reach. Whereas “Elon has a plan for everyone to buy Twitter Blue (but has yet to give good reasons why), for Meta it is about a scalable way to prevent impersonation of businesses [and] celebs,” suggests Benedict Evans, a tech analyst. Rob Leathern, a former Facebook executive, rejects the idea that the plan is a copy of Snap’s and Twitter’s efforts: Facebook has been working on verification for years, he says, citing its acquisition in 2018 of Confirm.io, a biometric-id startup.

Meta表示，其服务主要面向“创作者”，该人群因工作原因使用这一平台，或许也是最愿意为认证和增加曝光率付费的人群。技术分析师本尼迪克特·埃文斯（Benedict Evans）表示，“马斯克是想让每个用户都购买Twitter Blue服务，但尚未给出充分理由，但Meta推出付费服务的初衷却是，避免企业与名人冒充。”有人认为Meta抄袭了Snap与Twitter，Facebook前主管罗伯·莱瑟恩（Rob Leathern）予以否认，并指出Facebook于2018年收购生物识别初创公司Confirm.io后，多年来一直在研究账号认证技术。

注释：

当马斯克收购Twitter时，他改造了Twitter的Blue订阅服务，让用户能够以8美元的价格获得自己的验证复选标记。为了帮助用户区分通过Twitter Blue验证的账户和官方验证的账户，该社交媒体平台还推出了一种灰色的“官方”标签。虽然这项服务在不到24小时后就被撤下，在有一些不怀好意的用户利用他们的核对标志冒充公众人物和公司后，这项服务又被恢复了。

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To the extent that social networks embrace subscription it will mean a windfall for the mobile platforms that host their apps. Google, which runs the Android operating system, and Apple, which runs ios, make no money from apps’ advertising revenue, but take a cut of consumers’ in-app purchases, including recurring subscriptions. Having whacked the mobile ad business with new privacy rules, Apple and Google stand to profit from the resulting move to subscriptions.

社交媒体大力推行订阅服务将会为发布其APP的移动平台带来一笔意外之财。运行安卓系统的谷歌和运行iOS系统的苹果不能从APP的广告收入中获利，但可以从消费者在APP内的消费（包括定期订阅）中分一杯羹。苹果和谷歌用新的隐私规则给了移动广告业务当头一棒，于是就有了订阅业务，苹果和谷歌也开始从中获利。

There may be a sting in the tail. Whereas Meta’s new service costs $11.99 for those signing up on the web, the price if paying via the app is $14.99. Similarly, Mr Musk, who has called Apple’s fees “a 30% tax on the internet”, charges $8 for Twitter Blue online and $11 in app. Such two-tier pricing has proved controversial, with Apple blocking apps such as Fortnite, a video game which told users they could pay less in a browser. But as more large companies embrace differential pricing, consumers may learn that they can get a big discount by signing up outside Apple and Google’s ecosystems.

然而事情总有一些意外。通过APP订阅Meta新服务花费14.99美元，而通过网页只需花费11.99美元。同样地，马斯克吐槽道，苹果的服务费相当于对互联网征收了30%的税，网页购买Twitter Blue收费8美元，而APP内购买则收费11美元。价格的双轨制引发了不少争议，而苹果也下架了一些APP，如电子游戏《堡垒之夜》（Fortnite），只因其告诉用户通过浏览器购买会员费用更低。但随着更多大公司推行差异化定价，消费者可能意识到，绕过苹果和谷歌注册会享有更大折扣。

翻译组：

Charlie，往者不谏，来者可追

Des，愿你半生追逐便士，归来依旧心有月光

Summer，女，QE在职，梦想能仗走天涯 翻译/音乐/健康

校对组：

Eva，寻路中，偶尔怀念，时常向前

Francis，满地都是六便士，我却抬头看见了月亮

Rachel，学理工科，爱跳芭蕾，热爱文艺的非典型翻译