社交網絡Ello拒絕廣告 向互聯網"原罪"宣戰

The social networking site Ello is just five weeks old, but damn if it hasn’t made an impression. In the past week, the site has exploded on social media, starting with the LGBTQ community, the music industry, and—somewhat randomly— Germans. It continues to expand to various other corners of the Web. Today, 40,000 new signup requests are pouring in each hour, according to co-founder Paul Budnitz. The site had to temporarily cap new user invitations several times to keep from crashing. More than a million people are waiting to get into Ello, which is more people than are actually onEllo.

社交網站Ello剛剛上線五個星期，但它已經給很多人留下了深刻的印象。上週該網站的註冊人數激增，尤其受到同性戀圈、音樂界人士，還有德國人（最後這一點應該是個隨機現象）的追捧。它還在繼續進軍互聯網的其它角落。該公司的聯合創始人保羅o巴德尼茨表示，現在Ello每小時都會收到4萬個新的註冊申請，該網站不得不多次對新用戶邀請進行限制，以避免服務器崩潰。超過100萬人還在排隊等待進入Ello，這甚至比Ello上現有的用戶還多。

It’s the kind of attention any app developer would die for. How did a handful of guys in Vermont, with a bare-bones Tumblr knockoff, create the latest Web craze? Answer: Launch with a manifesto and an enemy. Ello refuses ads and dislikes Facebook for doing the opposite. “Your social network is owned by advertisers,” its manifesto declares. “You are the product that’s bought and sold.”

對於任何軟件開發者來說，能有這樣高的關注度真是死也值了。那麼這幾個佛蒙特州的傢伙，憑着一個界面還很簡陋的山寨版Tumblr，是怎樣創造出讓這麼多人爲之瘋狂的奇蹟的？答案是：憑藉一份宣言和一個敵人。Ello拒絕廣告，也不喜歡靠廣告吃飯的Facebook。該公司的宣言稱：“你們的社交網絡實際擁有者是廣告商，你們都是被買賣的貨物。“

At the bottom of the screed, users are offered two buttons. Click “I agree” and you end up on a sign-up page. Click “I disagree” and you arrive at . A subtle burn.

在這篇雄文的末尾，用戶能看到兩個按鍵。點擊“我同意”，你就進入了註冊頁面。點擊“我不同意”，你就進入了Facebook。真是一個巧妙的小花招。

While discussing the app, it’s difficult to keep Budnitz from wandering into soapbox territory. “I want to change the world,” he says in an interview with Fortune. “I want to prove that advertising isn’t the only way to make money on the Internet. What’s screwing up the Internet and creating all the data collection problems and privacy issues has to do with advertising as a model on the Internet.” Hundreds of thousands of people have clicked Ello’s “I agree” button in solidarity.

在討論這款應用時，你幾乎很難打斷巴德尼茨慷慨激昂的演講雅興。他在接受《財富》（Fortune）採訪時表示：“我想改變這個世界。我想證明廣告並不是在互聯網上掙錢的唯一方法。互聯網之所以變糟，之所以有這些數據蒐集問題和隱私問題，跟廣告這種掙錢模式有莫大關係。”而幾十萬人已經團結一心，在Ello上選擇了“我同意”。

There’s a small problem with being too self-righteous on the Internet, though: People are eager to point out your hypocrisy. Not long after Ello went viral, one of the site’s users pointed out that it had raised venture capital. The message was that the company will eventually be pressured to make lots of money or sell to someone who would likely do the same. Ello’s investors own 12% of the company, Budnitz says, and acknowledges that Ello is “obviously a business.” Unsurprisingly, his inbox has been flooded with venture capital interest this week.

不過在互聯網上搶佔道德高地也會碰到一些小問題，比如人們會迫不及待地證明你的僞善。就在Ello走紅後不久，該網站的一名用戶指出，Ello已經從風投那裏拉來了融資。這說明Ello最終還得面臨賺錢的壓力，或者被賣給想通過Ello賺錢的人。巴德尼茨也坦承投資者擁有該公司12%的股份，並表示Ello“顯然是筆生意”。不出所料，他的郵箱這周都快被表達風投意向的信函擠爆了。

There have been issues with Ello’s lack of privacy and blocking features, a basic requirement for any social media site in the era of online bullying and harassment. The company has responded by building features as quickly as possible, moving around its priorities, not unlike a politician might do to keep various constituents happy. For the haters, Budnitz has little sympathy. “If you don’t like what we’re doing, then please delete your account and leave,” he says.

Ello目前依然存在缺乏隱私和阻止功能等問題，在這個網絡流氓氾濫的年代，這個功能對任何社交媒體都是必不可少的。Ello公司表示會盡快構建相關功能，調整工作重點。他們就像政客對待選區的民衆一樣，希望讓大家都滿意。不過對於討厭Ello的人，巴德尼茨則毫不留情面。他說：“如果你不喜歡我們正在做的事，請刪除你的賬戶並離開。”

Even if Ello, a company with strongly stated principles, can make its audience of users with strongly held beliefs happy, it faces a much bigger challenge: survival. To be a successful business, Ello faces the not insignificant task of turning Internet’s entire business model on its head.

對於Ello這樣一家原則性很強的公司來說，就算它真的能讓那些同樣很有原則的用戶感到高興，它也依然面臨着一個更大的挑戰，那就是生存。想要成爲一家成功的企業，Ello需要解決的一大任務，就是轉變互聯網行業的整個業務模式。

Content and communications on the Web have monetized with eyeballs and advertisements since the Web’s earliest days. In Michael Wolff’s 1998 book Burn Rate, the teams at Time and Wired magazines in the mid-1990s separately have a lightbulb moment: “Users prefer to accept advertising rather than pay for the cost of content.” He writes: “Wired’s stature in the Internet community, and Time’s stature in the advertising community nearly overnight made advertising part of everyone’s plans for the Web.”

從互聯網的襁褓階段開始，網絡上的內容和傳播就一直在靠網友的眼球和廣告掙錢。邁克爾o沃爾夫在1998年的著作《燒錢速度》（Burn Rate）一書中寫道，90年代中期，《時代》（Time）和《連線》（Wired）雜誌都分別意識到廣告對互聯網的重要意義。書中寫道：“用戶更傾向於接受廣告，而不是花錢去購買內容。《連線》在互聯網社區中的高度，以及《時代》在廣告界的地位，幾乎一夜之間使廣告成了每個進軍網絡的人都要考慮的問題”

Wired’sfirst banner ad appeared in 1994. On that foundation, the Web’s economy was built. The ad-supported Web contributes around $530 billion to the U.S. economy, directly employing two million people and indirectly, 3.1 million, according to an IAB study from 2012, the latest available.

《連線》的第一條網頁橫幅廣告誕生於1994年。以此爲基礎，互聯網經濟開始建立起來。根據IAB公司2012年的一項研究，由廣告支持的互聯網行業爲美國經濟貢獻了大約5300億美元，提供了200萬個直接工作崗位和310萬個間接工作崗位。

It’s not that the world loves digital advertising. It’s that advertising happens to be the thing that works best. The Atlantic recently called digital advertising “the Internet’s original sin.” And so, we have a handful of noble, ambitious, possibly naive attempts to repent by reeling back Web’s default business model. Before Ello, there were the social networks and Diaspora, both of which came up short in their lofty goals.

這並非是說世界喜歡數字廣告，而是廣告正好是最合適的東西。《大西洋月刊》（The Atlantic）最近撰文稱，數字廣告是“互聯網的原罪”。因此，有少數內心崇高又雄心勃勃（可能也有點幼稚）的公司希望能擺脫這種默認的業務模式。比如在Ello之前還有和Diaspora等社交網絡，可惜他們的目標雖然高尚，卻仍免不了曇花一現的命運。

Ello’s business plan is different. The site plans to charge for features. If you want to manage two different accounts on Ello, you will have to pay a one-time fee of $2. The site launched with hardly any features in order to be as simple as possible. That gives Ello the option of charging for each new feature it introduces.

Ello的商業計劃則有些不一樣，該網站計劃根據功能收費。如果你想在Ello上擁有2個賬戶，你就得一次性支付2美元。由於奉行極簡主義，該網站剛發佈時幾乎什麼功能也沒有，因此對每項新功能收費成爲Ello今後的可能性之一。

The problem with , Budnitz says, is that its $50 per year membership was a high hurdle for people to get over. But it’s not clear how, even at scale, charging users $1 and $2 at a time could turn into a sizable (nevermind profitable) business. The company’s investors might not be okay with that, but Ello’s founders are. Its manifesto states that Ello’s founders are not interested in ruling the world: “We think people that are motivated to do things like that have unresolved psychological problems.”

巴德尼茨認爲，失敗的原因在於每年50美元的會員費實在是太貴了。不過我們現在還不清楚，哪怕Ello有再多的客戶，光靠向用戶一次收取1到2美元如何能演變成一個規模可觀的生意（更不用提盈利了）。雖然投資人可能會對此感到不爽，但Ello的幾位創始人卻認爲這樣沒什麼不好。Ello的聲明中表示，Ello的創始人對統治世界不感興趣：“我們認爲，一心想當老大的人，肯定有一些沒解決的心理問題。”（財富中文網）