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Nothing attracts news organizations like Facebook. And nothing makes them more nervous.
没有像Facebook那样吸引新闻机构的东西了。也没有什么东西能让新闻机构更紧张。
With 1.4 billion users, the social media site has become a vital source of traffic for publishers looking to reach an increasingly fragmented audience glued to smartphones. In recent months, Facebook has been quietly holding talks with at least half a dozen media companies about hosting their content inside Facebook rather than making users tap a link to go to an external site.
这个拥有14亿用户的社交媒体网站，对希望吸引整天盯着手机屏幕、越来越分心的受众的出版商来说，已成为一个流量的重要来源。近几个月来，Facebook已与至少六家媒体公司悄悄进行谈判，谈关于用Facebook内部的主机来托管媒体公司内容的合作，从而无需让用户通过点击链接进入外部的网站。
Such a plan would represent a leap of faith for news organizations accustomed to keeping their readers within their own ecosystems, as well as accumulating valuable data on them. Facebook has been trying to allay their fears, according to several of the people briefed on the talks, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were bound by nondisclosure agreements.
这个计划将对习惯于将读者留在自己的生态系统里、同时对其收集有价值数据的新闻机构来说，是个一百八十度的大转弯。据几位了解谈判的人说，Facebook一直在试图消除新闻机构的担心，这些人要求不具名，因为他们签了保密协议。
Facebook intends to begin testing the new format in the next several months, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions. The initial partners are expected to be The New York Times, BuzzFeed and National Geographic, although others may be added since discussions are continuing. The Times and Facebook are moving closer to a firm deal, one person said.
据两位了解谈判情况的人说，Facebook计划在未来几个月开始测试这种新方式。最初的合作伙伴预计将包括《纽约时报》、BuzzFeed，以及《国家地理》(National Geographic)杂志，但其他公司可能也会加入进来，因为讨论仍在继续。有一位人士表示，时报与Facebook正在接近达成一项协议。
To make the proposal more appealing to publishers, Facebook has discussed ways for publishers to make money from advertising that would run alongside the content.
为了让提议对出版商更具吸引力，Facebook提出了几种让出版商能用与内容同时运行的广告赚钱的方法。
Facebook has said publicly that it wants to make the experience of consuming content online more seamless. News articles on Facebook are currently linked to the publisher’s own website, and open in a web browser, typically taking about eight seconds to load. Facebook thinks that this is too much time, especially on a mobile device, and that when it comes to catching the roving eyeballs of readers, milliseconds matter.
Facebook曾公开表示，希望能把用户在网上消费内容的体验变得更流畅。Facebook上的新闻文章目前是链接到出版商自己的网站上的，并在单独的浏览器面页中打开，内容加载通常需大约八秒钟。Facebook认为这个时间太长了，尤其是在移动设备上，考虑到这涉及捕捉读者不断移动的眼球，毫秒的时间都很重要。
In addition to hosting content directly on Facebook, the company is talking with publishers about other technical ways to hasten delivery of their articles.
除了把内容直接托管到Facebook上，该公司也在与出版商谈关于让其内容更快加载的其他技术手段。
Even marginal increases in the speed of a site, said Edward Kim, chief executive of the analytics and distribution company SimpleReach, generally mean big increases in user satisfaction and traffic. So it is likely, he said, that Facebook’s plan focuses on those small improvements, rather than on getting money from deals with media companies.
分析发行流量的公司SimpleReach的首席执行官爱德华·金(Edward Kim)表示，即使是网站速度微不足道的增加，通常也意味着用户满意程度和流量的大增。所以，他说，Facebook的计划很可能侧重的是这些小的改进，而不是通过与媒体公司达成协议赚钱。
“But there are a lot of implications for publishers,” he added. “It really comes down to how Facebook structures this, and how they can ensure this is a win on both sides.”
“但这对出版商来说也有不少影响，”他补充说。“这归根结底取决于Facebook将如何实现，取决于他们怎么保证这对双方来说是互利互惠的。”
The issue is also pressing, he said, because some media companies have seen a drop in traffic from Facebook that could be attributed to the company’s prioritizing of video — a much more lucrative medium for ad sales.
他说，这个问题也具有急迫感，因为有些媒体公司已经看到来自Facebook的流量有所下降，可能是由于Facebook在重点发展视频内容，视频是更有利可图的广告销售渠道。
Video has become increasingly popular with Facebook users and advertisers, and at its developer conference that begins on Wednesday, the company is expected to introduce expanded tools to place video ads inside non-Facebook applications.
视频已经成为越来越受Facebook用户和广告客户欢迎的内容。在周三开始的Facebook开发者大会上，公司有望推出把视频广告加到非Facebook应用中的扩展工具。
Like Facebook, media companies also want improved user experiences. Still, they are treading carefully. While BuzzFeed has an overt policy of spreading its content outside of its own site, The Times uses a subscription model that provides a growing portion of the company’s revenue. It would have to weigh the benefits of reaching Facebook’s users — and the ad revenue that comes with them — against the prospect of giving away its content and losing the clicks on its own site that would instead stay within Facebook.
与Facebook一样，媒体公司也希望改进用户体验。尽管如此，他们在这件事上很小心翼翼。虽然BuzzFeed的公开政策，是让其网站上的内容流传到公司网站之外，但时报采用的是订阅模式，这种模式正为公司的营收提供日益增长的部分。时报不得不权衡得到Facebook用户所带来的好处、及其所附带的广告收入，因为这种做法涉及到免费提供自己的内容，失去自己网站点击数，让Facebook得到这些点击数的前景。
Some news organizations have reacted coolly to the proposal. Several employees of The Guardian, for example, have informally suggested to colleagues at other publications that publishers should band together to negotiate deals that work for the whole industry, and should retain control of their own advertising, whether content is hosted on Facebook or not, a person with knowledge of the discussions said.
有些新闻机构对Facebook的建议反应冷淡。比如，一位了解有关讨论的人表示，《卫报》(The Guardian)的几名员工已向在其他出版物工作的同事发出非正式建议，出版商应联合起来进行谈判，以达成对整个行业可行的协议，并应保留对自己做广告的控制权，不管出版商的内容是否托管在Facebook网站上。
Representatives for The Times and BuzzFeed declined to comment on Monday. The Guardian and National Geographic did not immediately respond to questions about talks with Facebook.
时报和BuzzFeed的代表周一婉言拒绝发表评论。《卫报》和《国家地理》没有马上回复有关与Facebook谈判的提问。
The Huffington Post and the business and economics website Quartz were also approached. Both also declined to discuss their involvement.
Facebook与《赫芬顿邮报》(Huffington Post)以及商业和经济网站Quartz也有接触。这两家也婉言拒绝讨论他们的参与。
Facebook declined to comment on its specific discussions with publishers. But the company noted that it had provided features to help publishers get better traction on Facebook, including tools unveiled in December that let them target their articles to specific groups of Facebook users, such as young women living in New York who like to travel.
Facebook婉言拒绝就其与出版商的具体讨论发表评论。但公司指出，它已经为出版商提供某些功能，帮助他们在Facebook上吸引更多的读者，这些功能包括去年12月发布的、让出版商能向特定的Facebook用户群提供内容的工具，比如住在纽约、喜欢旅游的年轻女性们。
The company recognizes that the new plan, championed by Chris Cox, the top lieutenant to Facebook’s chief, Mark Zuckerberg, on product matters, would remove the usual ads that publishers place around their content. Although the revenue-sharing ideas are still in flux, one would allow publishers to show a single ad in a custom format within each Facebook article, according to one person with knowledge of the discussions.
公司认识到，由Facebook首席执行官马克·扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)的高级副手克里斯·考克斯(Chris Cox)倡导的有关产品问题的新计划，将消除出版商通常安排的与其内容同时出现的广告。虽然共享收入的方法仍在不断变化，但据一位了解讨论的人说，其中一个可能是允许出版商在每篇Facebook文章中，用自定格式显示一个广告。
Facebook has not historically done any kind of revenue-sharing with content publishers. Essentially, its position has been “Put your content on Facebook and we’ll send you traffic.” But lately Facebook has been experimenting with revenue-sharing options. In December, it began showing N.F.L. clips sponsored by Verizon. Verizon paid for the clips to be sent to people’s news feeds and ran an ad at the end of them. The N.F.L. and Facebook split the revenue.
Facebook有史以来从未与内容出版商有过任何形式的收入共享。它的立场基本上一直是，“把你的内容放在Facebook上，我们向你提供流量。”但Facebook最近一直在探索收入共享的可能性。去年12月，它开始播放由Verizon赞助的NFL视频片段。Verizon公司出钱把视频发送到人们的新闻订阅中，然后在视频结尾处放段广告。收入由NFL与Facebook分成。
The new proposal by Facebook carries another risk for publishers: the loss of valuable consumer data. When readers click on an article, an array of tracking tools allow the host site to collect valuable information on who they are, how often they visit and what else they have done on the web.
Facebook的新方案给出版商带来另一种风险：失去有价值的消费者数据。当读者点击一篇文章时，一系列的跟踪工具让网站主机能够收集有价值的信息，比如读者是谁，他们访问网站的频率，他们在网站上还做了什么等等。
That data might instead go to Facebook, which like many companies uses that information itself to target and track consumers more effectively for advertisers (and which has been subject to criticisms over its privacy policies). It has not been disclosed how much of that data Facebook would be willing to share.
这些数据也许会被Facebook得到，与许多公司使用这类信息的公司一样，Facebook自己将能帮助广告商更有效地针对及跟踪消费者（Facebook的隐私政策一直受到人们的批评）。Facebook公司还没有透露会愿意分享多少这类数据。
And if Facebook pushes beyond the experimental stage and makes content hosted on the site commonplace, those who do not participate in the program could lose substantial traffic — a factor that has played into the thinking of some publishers. Their articles might load more slowly than their competitors’, and over time readers might avoid those sites.
如果Facebook将试验项目进一步推广，让使用其网站托管内容成为司空见惯的事情，那么，那些不参与该计划公司可能会失去大量的流量，这在一些出版商的考虑中是一个因素。他们的内容可能比他们竞争对手的加载速度变慢，随着时间的推移，读者可能会避免这些慢的网站。
And just as Facebook has changed its news feed to automatically play videos hosted directly on the site, giving them an advantage compared with videos hosted on YouTube, it could change the feed to give priority to articles hosted directly on its site.
而且，正如Facebook已经改变了其新闻订阅工具，让托管在其网站的视频能自动播放、使这些视频与托管在YouTube上的视频相比有了优势一样，Facebook也可能会修改新闻订阅工具，让直接托管在其网站上的文章有更高的优先级。
Over the long term, said Alan D. Mutter, a newspaper consultant who writes a blog called Reflections of a Newsosaur, all publishers are likely to have to allow their content to range more freely outside of their own sites.
为报纸作咨询的阿兰·D·穆特(Alan D. Mutter)有一个名为“新闻老古董的思考”(Reflections of a Newsosaur)的博客，他说，从长远来看，所有的出版商都可能不得不让其内容在自身网站以外的地方更自由地流动。
“But in the short term,” he said, “it’s a scary proposition because publishers want to control their brand, and their audience and their advertising dollars.”
“不过在短期内，这是件可怕的事情，因为出版商想控制自己的品牌、自己的受众，以及自己的广告收入，”他说。
Facebook, on the other hand, he said, can only benefit from it. “It enhances user satisfaction, keeps users on its site and has better content which allows it to sell advertising at better rates,” Mr. Mutter said.
而从另一方面来看，Facebook只会从中受益，他说。“它增强了用户的满意程度，把用户留在了自己的网站上，这就让它能把广告卖到更高的价钱，”穆特说。
