社交网络Ello拒绝广告 向互联网"原罪"宣战

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.

社交网站Ello刚刚上线五个星期，但它已经给很多人留下了深刻的印象。上周该网站的注册人数激增，尤其受到同性恋圈、音乐界人士，还有德国人（最后这一点应该是个随机现象）的追捧。它还在继续进军互联网的其它角落。该公司的联合创始人保罗o巴德尼茨表示，现在Ello每小时都会收到4万个新的注册申请，该网站不得不多次对新用户邀请进行限制，以避免服务器崩溃。超过100万人还在排队等待进入Ello，这甚至比Ello上现有的用户还多。

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.”

对于任何软件开发者来说，能有这样高的关注度真是死也值了。那么这几个佛蒙特州的家伙，凭着一个界面还很简陋的山寨版Tumblr，是怎样创造出让这么多人为之疯狂的奇迹的？答案是：凭借一份宣言和一个敌人。Ello拒绝广告，也不喜欢靠广告吃饭的Facebook。该公司的宣言称：“你们的社交网络实际拥有者是广告商，你们都是被买卖的货物。“

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.

在这篇雄文的末尾，用户能看到两个按键。点击“我同意”，你就进入了注册页面。点击“我不同意”，你就进入了Facebook。真是一个巧妙的小花招。

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.

在讨论这款应用时，你几乎很难打断巴德尼茨慷慨激昂的演讲雅兴。他在接受《财富》（Fortune）采访时表示：“我想改变这个世界。我想证明广告并不是在互联网上挣钱的唯一方法。互联网之所以变糟，之所以有这些数据搜集问题和隐私问题，跟广告这种挣钱模式有莫大关系。”而几十万人已经团结一心，在Ello上选择了“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.

不过在互联网上抢占道德高地也会碰到一些小问题，比如人们会迫不及待地证明你的伪善。就在Ello走红后不久，该网站的一名用户指出，Ello已经从风投那里拉来了融资。这说明Ello最终还得面临赚钱的压力，或者被卖给想通过Ello赚钱的人。巴德尼茨也坦承投资者拥有该公司12%的股份，并表示Ello“显然是笔生意”。不出所料，他的邮箱这周都快被表达风投意向的信函挤爆了。

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目前依然存在缺乏隐私和阻止功能等问题，在这个网络流氓泛滥的年代，这个功能对任何社交媒体都是必不可少的。Ello公司表示会尽快构建相关功能，调整工作重点。他们就像政客对待选区的民众一样，希望让大家都满意。不过对于讨厌Ello的人，巴德尼茨则毫不留情面。他说：“如果你不喜欢我们正在做的事，请删除你的账户并离开。”

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.

对于Ello这样一家原则性很强的公司来说，就算它真的能让那些同样很有原则的用户感到高兴，它也依然面临着一个更大的挑战，那就是生存。想要成为一家成功的企业，Ello需要解决的一大任务，就是转变互联网行业的整个业务模式。

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.”

从互联网的襁褓阶段开始，网络上的内容和传播就一直在靠网友的眼球和广告挣钱。迈克尔o沃尔夫在1998年的著作《烧钱速度》（Burn Rate）一书中写道，90年代中期，《时代》（Time）和《连线》（Wired）杂志都分别意识到广告对互联网的重要意义。书中写道：“用户更倾向于接受广告，而不是花钱去购买内容。《连线》在互联网社区中的高度，以及《时代》在广告界的地位，几乎一夜之间使广告成了每个进军网络的人都要考虑的问题”

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.

《连线》的第一条网页横幅广告诞生于1994年。以此为基础，互联网经济开始建立起来。根据IAB公司2012年的一项研究，由广告支持的互联网行业为美国经济贡献了大约5300亿美元，提供了200万个直接工作岗位和310万个间接工作岗位。

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.

这并非是说世界喜欢数字广告，而是广告正好是最合适的东西。《大西洋月刊》（The Atlantic）最近撰文称，数字广告是“互联网的原罪”。因此，有少数内心崇高又雄心勃勃（可能也有点幼稚）的公司希望能摆脱这种默认的业务模式。比如在Ello之前还有和Diaspora等社交网络，可惜他们的目标虽然高尚，却仍免不了昙花一现的命运。

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的商业计划则有些不一样，该网站计划根据功能收费。如果你想在Ello上拥有2个账户，你就得一次性支付2美元。由于奉行极简主义，该网站刚发布时几乎什么功能也没有，因此对每项新功能收费成为Ello今后的可能性之一。

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.”

巴德尼茨认为，失败的原因在于每年50美元的会员费实在是太贵了。不过我们现在还不清楚，哪怕Ello有再多的客户，光靠向用户一次收取1到2美元如何能演变成一个规模可观的生意（更不用提盈利了）。虽然投资人可能会对此感到不爽，但Ello的几位创始人却认为这样没什么不好。Ello的声明中表示，Ello的创始人对统治世界不感兴趣：“我们认为，一心想当老大的人，肯定有一些没解决的心理问题。”（财富中文网）