What does this have to do with whether Facebook is a platform or a product? In the same way that Zuckerberg can’t help but think about Facebook’s users as “user objects, ” he also is having a hard time transitioning from startup to maintenance. The recent Poke apps was a demonstration of a mature company trying to act like a startup—which is endearing in the way that aging rockers can be—but let’s just say that Facebook no longer has the “moves like Jagger, ” and the app only succeeded at making competitor Snapchat more popular.
这与Facebook是平台还是产品有什么关系呢？就像扎克伯格情不自禁地把Facebook的用户视为“用户对象”那样，他也在从创业到守业的转变中遇到了麻烦。最近推出的Poke应用说明这家已经成熟的公司试图像创业公司那样行事。如果放在年迈的摇滚歌手身上，这是讨人喜欢的做法，但我认为Facebook无法再“像贾格尔那样舞动”。Poke应用只是成功地使竞争对手Snapchat变得更受欢迎。
Graph Search evidences a similar problem. It was presented as an exciting new product for users. A “third pillar” of the service. But, in fact, it is a platform capability (and just the start of one) that marketers will have more use for than users. As content strategist Karen McGrane commented when I asked her about it, “Faceted search like that is pretty nerdy, I would be surprised if most Facebook users wanted to engage that way. Even calling it Graph search shows their engineering heart.” Users don’t think about the “graph, ” engineers do. User experience people don’t think of users as objects, programmers do!
社交搜索工具Graph Search也说明了同样的问题。该工具曾被当作激动人心的新产品呈献给用户，被视为Facebook的“第三支柱”。但实际上，它是一种平台能力（只是个开始），对营销人员的用处比对用户的用处更大。当我就此问题询问内容策略专家卡伦·麦格雷恩（Karen McGrane）时，她回答说：“像Graph Search这样的专业搜索工具有很重的书呆子气，如果大多数Facebook用户都想使用它，这会令我吃惊不已。就连Graph Search这个名字也显露了工程本质。”用户不会想到“Graph”（意即图表），只有工程师会。从事于用户体验工作的人不会把用户视为对象，只有程序员会！
Investors may come to the conclusion that although it was Zuckerberg’s vision (and you could say, narcissism) that built Facebook, it will require a different leader to extract the value from its one billion user platform. This will require more empathy with the users, but also more flexible relationships with the developers who will help users find their own value in all of that content. By continuing to launch its own products on the platform, Facebook is turing developers into competitors (that have to be cut off) overnight. Better, perhaps, would be for Facebook to recuse itself from developing its own products but instead to pick among the fruit of third-party developers to incorporate, non-exclusively, into its platform.
投资者可以得出这样的结论：虽然是扎克伯格的想法（可以说是自恋）创造了Facebook，但需要另一位领导者才能从这个拥有10亿用户的平台提取价值。这需要在更大的程度上与用户打成一片，同时还需要与开发商建立更加灵活的关系，这些开发商将帮助用户在所有那些内容中找到他们自己的价值。由于不断地在平台上发布自己的产品，Facebook一夜之间把开发商变成了竞争对手（这种做法必须终止）。放弃研发自己的产品，转而以非排他的方式把第三方开发者的成果融入自己的平台，这对Facebook来说或许更好。
The investors themselves, or at least the investment bankers who structured Facebook’s IPO, are somewhat to blame here, as well. Extracting platform fees is a slower growth model than always-be-shipping product development, but it’s more sustainable. Facebook’s one billion users are not going away any time soon, but too many missteps could leach away participation and turn it into a “ghost town” before its time.
Facebook的投资者，或者至少是那些承销Facebook IPO的投资银行家，也对此有所不满。与不断研发新产品相比，收取平台费用是更慢的增长模式，具可持续性。Facebook的10亿用户不会很快流失，但太多的失误可能会降低参与度，提前把Facebook变成“鬼城”。
Facebook is a platform, its users are not objects, surely there is a good business to be made out of it!
Facebook是个平台，其用户不是对象，这其中必定能诞生出一门好营生！
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