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Eight years later, Facebook is one of the hottest companies in the world. On

游客2023-12-15  6
问题     Eight years later, Facebook is one of the hottest companies in the world. On February 1 st the social network announced plans for an initial public offering (IPO) that could value it at between $75 billion and $ 100 billion. This is extraordinary. Investors believe that a start-up run by a cocky 27-year-old is more valuable than Boeing, the world’s largest aircraft maker. Are they nuts?
    Not necessarily. Facebook could soon boast one billion users. Last year it generated $3.7 billion in revenue and $1 billion in net profits. That is nowhere near enough to justify its price tag. But there are reasons to bet Facebook will justify the hype, for it has found a new way to harness a prehistoric instinct. People love to socialise, and Facebook makes it easier. The shy become more outgoing online. The young, the mobile and the busy find that Facebook is an efficient way of staying in touch. You can do it via laptop or smartphone, while lying in bed, waiting for a bus or pretending to work. You can look up old friends, make new ones, share photos, arrange parties and tell each other what you thought of the latest George Clooney film.
    As more people join Facebook, its appeal grows. Those who sign up have access to a wider circle. Those who don’t can feel excluded. This powerful feedback loop has already made Facebook the biggest social-networking site in many countries. It accounts for one in seven minutes spent online worldwide. Its growth may be slowing in some rich countries—unsurprisingly, given how enormous it already is. But it is still growing fast in big emerging markets such as Brazil and India.
    A $100 billion price tag would hardly be cheap, but other tech giants are worth more: Google’s market capitalisation is $190 billion, Microsoft’s $250 billion and Apple’s $425 billion. And the commercial possibilities are immense, for three reasons.
    First, Facebook knows a staggering amount about its users. It is also constantly devising ways to find out more. The company mines users’ data to work out what they like and then hits their eyeballs with spookily well-targeted ads.
    Second, Facebook is the most powerful platform for social marketing. Few sales pitches are as persuasive as a recommendation from a friend, so the billions of interactions on Facebook now influence everything from the music that people buy to the politicians they vote for. Companies, like teenagers, are discovering that if they are not on Facebook, they are left out. Social commerce is still in its infancy, but a study by Booz & Company reckons that $5 billion-worth of goods were sold in this way last year.
    Finally, Facebook is becoming the world’s de facto online passport. Since so many people have a Facebook account under their real name, other companies are starting to use a Facebook login as a means of identifying people online. It has even created its own online currency, the Facebook Credit.
    That is the case for Facebullishness. But there are also two sets of reasons to worry. The first is the managerial challenge of jumping from start-up to giant. Facebook has only 3,200 employees, many of whom will now become paper millionaires. The prospect of having to motivate VIP employees--Silicon Valley shorthand for workers "vesting in peace"—may explain why Mr. Zuckerberg delayed a flotation so long. With the billions of dollars that the IPO will bring in, the firm will add more people and services. It has already rolled out an e-mail service and persuaded millions of other websites to add buttons and links that enable Facebook users to share material. It is bound to add an online-search function that will heat up its battle with Google, which is including information from its Google+ social network in its own search results.
    Google has made the jump from popularity to profitability. For all its talk of new revenue streams, Facebook is still dangerously dependent on display ads. And there is a tension between attracting users and squeezing money out of them. Facebook’s greatest asset is the information that its users willingly surrender to it. Turning such data into cash, however, will inevitably raise privacy concerns. Most users don’t realise how much Facebook knows, about them. If they start to feel that it is abusing their trust, they will clam up and log out.
    This is where the other set of worries emerges—and these should concern more than just investors. America’s Federal Trade Commission has already forced Facebook to submit to a biennial external audit of its privacy policy and procedures. It would be better if Facebook, Google and other web giants switched their default settings from "opt-out" to "opt-in" (so that users had to give permission for the companies to use their data).
                                              From The Economist, February 4, 2012 [br] What is the main purpose of this article?
选项 A、To admonish all the web tycoons for privacy-related business with facebook as an example.
B、To give an unbiased review on the forthcoming IPO plan of facebook.
C、To illustrate the pros and cons of facebook business.
D、None of the above.
答案 B
解析 本题为主旨题。选项A的意思是，以脸谱网为例，警告网络巨头注意隐私权的问题；选项B对脸谱网即将上市的计划给予公正客观的评述；选项C阐述脸谱网生意的优点和缺点；我们发现，选项B还是符合主旨的，因此为正确选项。
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