文章来源：Feb 25th 2023 期 Business 栏目 Social media

“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.

“它是免费的，而且永远都是免费的，”Facebook近十年来一直在其登录页面上这样宣称。目前，facebook仍是全球最大的社交网络。但从本周开始，facebook及其姐妹应用Instagram的用户可以选择每月支付11.99美元，获得一个“经过验证”的账户，从而获得更好的客户服务、更广泛传播的帖子以及名字旁边的蓝色徽章。

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.

订阅是增长趋势的最新例证。去年6月，在20多岁年轻人中很受欢迎的即时通讯应用Snapchat推出了3.99美元的计划，名为Snapchat+。去年12月，Twitter重新推出了每月8美元的Twitter Blue服务。和Meta的服务一样，这两家公司都提供了各种各样的福利，最重要的是，用户的帖子会在其他人的feed流中占据更显眼的位置。

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.

靠广告支撑的网络正在寻求多样化的收入来源，这并不令人惊讶。经过多年不间断的增长，在线广告业务遇到了减速带。广告预算从报纸等线下场所一次性大规模转移到网络上的过程已经基本完成。自2021年以来，移动广告一直受到苹果首创的反跟踪规则的阻碍，这使得脸书等应用更难命中广告并衡量其有效性。

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.

结果是痛苦的。Facebook的母公司Meta在过去三个季度的收入都在下降。尽管最近出现反弹，但其股价仍不到2021年峰值的一半。Snapchat的母公司Snap在同一时期蒸发了近90%的市值。Twitter于去年10月被自诩为“电音之王”的善变的埃隆·马斯克收购，其所有者本月在推特上写道，该公司此前曾面临破产，目前正“趋于收支平衡”。

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.

日前推特方面宣布，自3月20日开始，将不再支持用户基于短信的双重因素身份验证（2FA）方式，仅购买了“推特蓝”（Twitter Blue）订阅服务的用户才可继续使用。

据悉，双重因素身份验证被用来确保用户的账户安全，用户不仅需要输入密码，还要输入代码或使用安全密钥来进行进一步验证，以确保只有用户本人才可以访问账户。目前，推特方面提供了三种2FA方式，其中包括短信、身份验证应用程序和安全密钥。

订阅并不能替代广告。Snap在2月17日表示，已有250万人注册了Snapchat+，不到其3.75亿日用户的1%。这意味着年订阅销售额不超过1.2亿美元，不到Snap去年总收入的3%。尽管推特没有透露有多少人加入了Blue(它的整个新闻办公室似乎都被解雇了)，但最近泄露的数据显示，这个数字低于30万。这款产品仍在开发中，承诺的功能包括减少广告数量，并宣称“很快就会推出”。2月17日，推特采取了一种新的方法来推动注册，它宣布对于那些不付费的用户，短信双重身份验证(一种安全功能)将很快被关闭。

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，其产品针对的是“创作者”，这些人使用其平台进行工作，可能最愿意为认证和额外覆盖面付费。科技分析师本尼迪克特•埃文斯表示:“埃隆计划让每个人都购买Twitter Blue(但他还没有给出充分的理由)，而对Meta来说，这是一种可扩展的方式，可以防止模仿企业和名人。”Facebook前高管罗布·利森否认该计划是Snap和Twitter尝试的翻版: 他说，Facebook多年来一直致力于认证，并以2018年收购Confirm.io为例。Confirm.io是一家生物识别技术初创公司。

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.

从某种程度上说，社交网络接受订阅，这将意味着承载其应用程序的移动平台会有意外之财。运行安卓操作系统的谷歌和运行iOS的苹果都不从应用的广告收入中获利，而是从消费者的应用内购买(包括定期订阅)中抽成。苹果和谷歌在用新的隐私规定打击了移动广告业务后，有望从由此带来的向订阅的转变中获利。

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.

这可能会带来麻烦。Meta的新服务在网上注册的价格为11.99美元，而通过应用程序支付的价格为14.99美元。同样，曾将苹果的收费称为“对互联网征收30%的税”的马斯克，对Twitter Blue在线收费8美元，对应用收费11美元。事实证明，这种双重定价颇具争议，苹果屏蔽了《堡垒之夜》等应用，这款视频游戏告诉用户，他们可以在浏览器中支付更少的费用。但随着越来越多的大公司采用差别定价，消费者可能会发现，如果在苹果和谷歌的生态系统之外注册，他们可以获得很大的折扣。