臉書是如何改變用戶消費媒體新聞的

Many of the people who read this article will do so because Greg Marra, 26, a Facebook engineer, calculated that it was the kind of thing they might enjoy.

許多讀過這篇文章的人都會被改變，因爲26歲的臉書工程師格雷格馬拉統計這會是人們非常享受的事。

Mr. Marra’s team designs the code that drives Facebook’s News Feed — the stream of updates, photographs, videos and stories that users see. He is also fast becoming one of the most influential people in the news business.

馬拉先生的團隊負責設計編碼臉書動態信息-新消息、照片、視頻以及用戶們看的故事。他也很快晉升爲新聞業最有影響力的人之一。

Facebook now has a fifth of the world — about 1.3 billion people — logging on at least monthly. It drives up to 20 percent of traffic to news sites, according to figures from the analytics company SimpleReach. On mobile devices, the fastest-growing source of readers, the percentage is even higher, SimpleReach says, and continues to increase.

臉書每個月至少有近世界五分之一的人口-大約13億人-登錄。觸手可及公司的數據員提供的數據表明臉書使人們對新聞網站的使用增加了20%。該公司還指出移動設備作爲讀者增長最快的平臺增長比例更大，並且還在持續增長中。

The social media company is increasingly becoming to the news business what Amazon is to book publishing — a behemoth that provides access to hundreds of millions of consumers and wields enormous power. About 30 percent of adults in the United States get their news on Facebook, according to a study from the Pew Research Center. The fortunes of a news site, in short, can rise or fall depending on how it performs in Facebook’s News Feed.

這家社交媒體公司在新聞界的地位逐漸可與亞馬遜在圖書出版業的地位媲美。它消費人數上億，擁有巨大影響力。皮尤研究中心指出30%的美國成年人通過臉書讀取新聞。簡單的說就是一個新聞網站的命運與否取決於其在臉書動態信息上的表現。

Though other services, like Twitter and Google News, can also exert a large influence, Facebook is at the forefront of a fundamental change in how people consume journalism. Most readers now come to it not through the print editions of newspapers and magazines or their home pages onLine, but through social media and search engines driven by an algorithm, a mathematical formula that predicts what users might want to read.

儘管推特和谷歌新聞等其他服務商也擁有巨大影響力。臉書卻是徹底改變人們消費新聞方式的領軍人物。如今大多數讀者都不再通過紙質版報紙、雜誌或者在線主頁瀏覽新聞，而是利用社交媒體和搜索引擎。後者可以通過演算法即一種數學公式預測讀者可能想要讀的新聞。

It is a world of fragments, filtered by code and delivered on demand. For news organizations, said Cory Haik, senior editor for digital news at The Washington Post, the shift represents “the great unbundling” of journalism. Just as the music industry has moved largely from selling albums to songs bought instantly online, publishers are increasingly reaching readers through individual pieces rather than complete editions of newspapers or magazines. A publication’s home page, said Edward Kim, a co-founder of SimpleReach, will soon be important more as an advertisement of its brand than as a destination for readers.

這是一個由片段構成的世界，充斥着編碼，按需定製。華盛頓郵報電子新聞高級編輯克里海客說對新聞機構而言，這種轉變意味着新聞業的“大分拆”。音樂界已經完成了從賣唱片到在網上隨時隨地售賣歌曲的大跨步。出版社也越來越多地通過散文章而不是一整期報紙或者雜誌將新聞呈現給讀者了。觸手可及的合夥人愛德華金姆說出版社的主頁很快就會成爲宣傳其品牌的重要平臺而不是讀者的閱讀終端。

“People won’t type in anymore,” Ms. Haik said. “It’s search and social.”

“人們不會再輸入了。”海客先生說，“一切都要依靠搜索和社交了。”

The shift raises questions about the ability of computers to curate news, a role traditionally played by editors. It also has broader implications for the way people consume information, and thus how they see the world.

該轉變引發了有關電腦過濾新聞能力的問題。這一直以來都是編劇的工作。它也對人們消費信息的方式造成更多影響，進而波及人們看待世界的方式。

In an interview at Facebook’s sprawling headquarters here, which has a giant, self-driving golf cart that takes workers between buildings, Mr. Marra said he did not think too much about his impact on journalism.

臉書多棟總部大樓裏有一輛巨大的自動駕駛高爾夫球車可以載着員工在樓宇之間穿行。馬拉先生就是在那裏接受了採訪，他說他沒多想自己對新聞的影響。

“We try to explicitly view ourselves as not editors,” he said. “We don’t want to have editorial judgment over the content that’s in your feed. You’ve made your friends, you’ve connected to the pages that you want to connect to and you’re the best decider for the things that you care about.”

“我們明確努力不把自己看做編輯。”他說。“我們不希望你的消息內容裏出現編輯式評論。你自己去結交朋友，你自己去看想看的網站，並且你是決定你要在乎的事情的最佳人選。”

In Facebook’s work on its users’ news feeds, Mr. Marra said, “we’re saying, ‘We think that of all the stuff you’ve connected yourself to, this is the stuff you’d be most interested in reading.' ”

馬拉先生在談到臉書在用戶新聞消息方面所做的工作的時候，他說：“我們想說的是'我們認爲你連接的任何內容都會是你最想讀的東西。'”

Roughly once a week, he and his team of about 16 adjust the complex computer code that decides what to show a user when he or she first logs on to Facebook. The code is based on “thousands and thousands” of metrics, Mr. Marra said, including what device a user is on, how many comments or likes a story has received and how long readers spend on an article.

他和他的團隊（16人左右）基本上每週都會調整一次決定用戶在登錄臉書後第一時間看到的內容的複雜電腦編碼。馬拉先生說這個編碼建立在數以萬計的權值基礎之上，其中包括用戶使用的設備、某個故事獲得的評論數量或者點贊數量以及讀者們在閱讀某篇文章上花的時長。

The goal is to identify what users most enjoy, and its results vary around the world. In India, he said, people tend to share what the company calls the ABCDs: astrology, Bollywood, cricket and divinity.

目標即爲找出用戶最鍾愛的內容。世界各地喜好差距很大。他說印度人往往會分享被臉書公司稱作入門知識的內容：占星術、寶萊塢、板球和神學。

If Facebook’s algorithm smiles on a publisher, the rewards, in terms of traffic, can be enormous. If Mr. Marra and his team decide that users do not enjoy certain things, such as teaser headlines that lure readers to click through to get all the information, it can mean ruin. When Facebook made changes to its algorithm in December 2013 to emphasize higher-quality content, several so-called viral sites that had thrived there, including Upworthy, Distractify and Elite Daily, saw large declines in their traffic.

如果臉書的演算法向某位出版商露笑臉，那麼該出版商的瀏覽量一定非常可觀。如果馬拉先生及其團隊認爲用戶不喜歡某些東西，比如吸引讀者一路點到底才能獲取信息的戲弄標題，那它就玩完了。2013年12月臉書對演算法做出改變強調高品質內容。當時許多紅極一時的所謂的熱門網站瀏覽量大幅下跌。

Facebook executives frame the company’s relationship with publishers as mutually beneficial: when publishers promote their content on Facebook, its users have more engaging material to read, and the publishers get increased traffic driven to their sites. Numerous publications, including The New York Times, have met with Facebook officials to discuss how to improve their referral traffic.

臉書總管們將公司與出版商的關係描述爲互惠。當出版商改善其在臉書上的內容質量的時候，臉書用戶就有更有看頭的內容可讀，而出版商網站的瀏覽量也會增加。包括《紐約時報》在內的衆多出版物都與臉書官員碰面探討增加推薦流量的方法。

The increased traffic can potentially mean that the publisher can increase its advertising rates or convert some of those new readers into subscribers.

瀏覽量增加就有可能意味着出版商可以擡高其廣告費或者將那些新讀者轉變爲訂閱讀者。

Social media companies like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn want their users to spend more time,or do more, on their services — a concept known as engagement, said Sean Munson, an assistant professor at the University of Washington who studies the intersection of technology and behavior.

華盛頓大學副教授肖恩芒森研究科技與行爲交叉點。他說像臉書、推特和鄰客音之類的社交媒體公司希望用戶可以花更多時間使用其服務或者在其服務平臺上做更多事情。這種觀念被稱作參與度。

Facebook officials say that the more time users spend at its site, the more likely there will be a robust exchange of diverse viewpoints and ideas shared online. Others fear that users will create their own echo chambers, and filter out coverage they do not agree with. “And that,” Mr. Munson said, “is when you get conspiracy theories.”

臉書官員稱用戶在其網站上停留的時間越久網絡上就會有越激烈的不同意見想法交流。有人擔心用戶會創建自己的迴音室，並且過濾掉他們不認可的報道。芒森說：“那就是你產生陰謀論的時候會有的想法。”

Ben Smith, editor in chief of BuzzFeed, a news and entertainment site, said his rule for writing and reporting in a fragmented age is simple: “no filler.” News organizations that still publish a print edition, he said, have slots — physical holes on paper or virtual ones on a home page — that result in the publication of stories that are not necessarily the most interesting or timely, but are required to fill the space. It was partly to discourage such slot-filling that BuzzFeed did not focus on its home page when it first started, he said.

本史密斯（蜂鳴新聞娛樂網的主編）說他在破裂時代對寫作與報道定下的規矩很簡單：“不要填充物。”他說那些依然在出版紙質出版物的新聞機構會出現有一些空白區-或是報紙上真真正正的空白區或是主頁上的虛擬空白區。這就導致它們會出版一些單純爲填補空缺而出版的卻並不一定是最有趣或最新的故事。蜂鳴在初期並沒有專注於主頁有一部分原因就是爲了打擊填充作品。

Mr. Kim of SimpleReach says he advises established media companies that “it’s dangerous to start chasing social. You’ll end up like everyone else, and you’ll lose your differentiation.” The question that older publications that are not “digital natives” like BuzzFeed have to ask themselves, Mr. Kim said, is “Are you creating content for the way that content is consumed in this environment?”

觸手可及公司的金姆先生給著名的媒體公司提出建議認爲“追趕社交是危險的。你最終會落得與其他人一樣的下場，你會失去自己的個性。”金姆先生說像蜂鳴這樣非電子出身的老出版物要捫心自問的是：“你創造的內容是按照當下環境里人們消費方式創造的嗎？”

Ms. Haik, the Washington Post digital editor, is leading a team, started this year, that aims to deliver different versions of The Post’s journalism to different people, based on information about how they have come to an article, which device they are on and even, if it is a phone, which way they are holding it.

《華盛頓郵報》電子編輯海客小姐從今年起開始領導一隻隊伍。該隊伍的目標是根據人們接觸信息的方式、使用的設備，甚至如果用電話的話持電話方式來爲不同的人提供不同版本的報紙內容。

“We’re asking if there’s a different kind of storytelling, not just an ideal presentation,” she said. For instance, she said, people reading The Post on a mobile phone during the day will probably want a different kind of reading experience than those who are on a Wi-Fi connection at home in the evening.

“我們在問是否有不同的講故事方式而不只是尋求完美的展示這麼簡單。”她說。比如，她說那些白天用移動手機看《郵報》的人希望得到的閱讀體驗也許和那些晚上在家用無線的人不一樣。

The Post is putting time and energy into such efforts, Ms. Haik said, because it is “ultimately about sustaining our business or growing our audience.” More than half of its mobile readers, she said, are so-called millennials who consume news digitally and largely through social media sites like Facebook. Some publications have found a niche in taking the opposite approach. The Browser is edited by Robert Cottrell, a former journalist at The Financial Times and The Economist. Mr. Cottrell skims about 1,000 articles a day, he said, and then publishes five or six that he finds interesting for about 7,000 subscribers who pay $20 a year. A recent selection included the life of an early-20th-century American bricklayer and a study of great Eastern philosophers.

海客小姐說《郵報》在花時間和經歷做這樣的事是因爲“終極目標是維持經營以及增加讀者數量。”她說《郵報》一半以上的移動讀者都是所謂的千禧年一代。他們主要通過臉書之類的社交媒體網站閱讀新聞。有些出版物從另一個角度出發也爲自己找到立足之地。《The Browser》的編輯是羅伯特科特雷爾，他之前曾在《金融時報》和《經濟學人》任職記者。科特雷爾先生說他每天大概要瀏覽1000篇文章。然後在其中找出五到六篇他認爲有趣的文章發表以供每年付費20美元的約7，000名訂閱者閱讀。他最新選出的兩篇文章分別是講述一位20世紀初的美國磚匠的故事和一份對東方哲學家的研究。

“The general idea is to offer a few pieces each day which we think are both enjoyable and of lasting value,” Mr. Cottrell said. “We’re certainly at the other end of the process from the algorithms.”

“我們的主要是想每天提供幾篇我們認爲既有趣又有長期價值的文章。”科特雷爾先生說。“我們絕對是在演算法的另一種端。”

Artificial intelligence, he said, may eventually be able to find a piece of writing moving, in some sense, and want to share it. But for the moment, computers rely on information gathered online “and that is going to be a very, very impoverished data set compared to a human being.”

他說或許人工智能終有一天會有能力找到感人的文章並且在某種程度上想要將文章分享給別人看。不過目前電腦還是要依賴網上搜集的信息，“並且它的數據與人類相比是非常貧瘠的。”

Mr. Marra, the Facebook engineer, agrees that a human editor for each individual would be ideal. “But it’s not realistic to do that at scale for every person on the planet,” he said, “and so I think we’ll always have these hybrid systems like News Feed that are helping you find the things that you care about.” It is simply, he said, “a personalized newspaper.”

臉書工程師馬拉先生也同意如果每個人都擁有一位人類編輯那會非常完美。“不過要讓地球上每個人都享有這種待遇不現實。”他說道，“所以我認爲我們會一直利用想動態消息這樣的雜交系統幫助你尋找你在意的東西。”他說這其實就是一份“個人定製報紙了”。