移动体验恶言堂

翻这篇文真是费劲，感谢子微及徐MM一同与我咬文嚼字：）
他吸引了一大批访问者，但由“用户制造”的视频能赚钱吗？

“星巴克里有舒服的椅子，且坐在上边并不需要花钱”，一家网络视频公司——Guba网 的老板兼创始人Tom McInerney说到。与此相反，星巴克花巨资营造惬意的环境，因此人们愿意去购买高价咖啡。其实，这种商业模式正在被“用户生产内容”的网站所模仿， 如个人博客，照片存储，以及当前风靡全球，容许业余爱好者制作视频，再将其上传并可在线观看的网站——YouTube, Google Video, MySpace, Guba, Veoh and Metacafe。通过制造一个免费的交互平台，这些网站就好比提供了舒适的椅子。问题是，至今为止这些网站里缺少像高价咖啡那样可以为公司带来利润的东西。

Internet video

The trouble with YouTube

网络视频  YouTube之痛

It attracts a lot of viewers, but can “user-generated” video make money?

他吸引了一大批访问者，但由“用户制造”的视频能赚钱吗？

“STARBUCKS has comfy chairs, but they don’t charge people for sitting in them,” says Tom McInerney, the boss and co-founder of Guba, an internet-video company. Instead, he explains, Starbucks provides a comfortable environment, at considerable expense, so that people will buy overpriced coffee. That, in essence, is the business model being pursued by websites that host “user-generated content” such as personal blogs, photographs and today’s craze, amateur videos, which can be uploaded and watched on sites such as YouTube, Google Video, MySpace, Guba, Veoh and Metacafe. By offering a setting for free interaction, such sites provide the online equivalent of comfy chairs. The trouble is that, so far, there is no equivalent of the overpriced coffee that brings in the money and pays the bills.

“星巴克里有舒服的椅子，且坐在上边并不需要花钱”，一家网络视频公司——Guba网 的老板兼创始人Tom McInerney说到。与此相反，星巴克花巨资营造惬意的环境，因此人们愿意去购买高价咖啡。其实，这种商业模式正在被“用户生产内容”的网站所模仿， 如个人博客，照片存储，以及当前风靡全球，容许业余爱好者制作视频，再将其上传并可在线观看的网站——YouTube, Google Video, MySpace, Guba, Veoh and Metacafe。通过制造一个免费的交互平台，这些网站就好比提供了舒适的椅子。问题是，至今为止这些网站里缺少像高价咖啡那样可以为公司带来利润的东西。

That is why people like Chad Hurley and Steven Chen (pictured), the co-founders of YouTube, the clear leader of the pack by audience size, are casting around for a business model. Aware that inserting advertisements at the beginning of video clips, as some sites do, is annoying and risks driving away YouTube’s users, Mr Hurley and Mr Chen have announced two experiments with advertising, with the promise of more to come. One idea is for “brand channels” in which corporate customers create pages for their own promotional clips. Warner Brothers Records, a music label, led the way, setting up a page to promote a new album by Paris Hilton. The second experiment is “participatory video ads”, whereby advertisements can be uploaded and then rated, shared and tagged just like amateur clips. This “encourages engagement and participation,” the company declares.

查德赫尔利和史蒂芬陈作 为YouTube的联合创始人、用户规模最大的网络视频站点的老大，与及其同行试图打造一种新的商业模式的原因便在于此。众所周知， 在视频剪辑前插入广告让人厌烦，还很可能赶走YouTube的用户，在此前提之下，他们已发布了两个广告的实验，而这仅仅是开始。其中一个想法是“品牌频 道”，公司顾客可以在此创建页面用以发布他们自己的视频剪辑。华纳兄弟唱片公司吃了第一只螃蟹，建立了一个用以宣传Paris Hilton新唱片的页面。第二个实验是“共享视频广告”，其中可上传广告，然后对广告进行排名、共享、标签，就像业余爱好者制作的剪辑一样。这项尝试将 “鼓励共享与参与”，公司称。

Even as advertisers evaluate these new ideas, however, YouTube and the other video-sharing sites face other difficulties. For one thing, they are in a no-man’s land of copyright law: they promise to pull pirated content from their sites when asked to do so, but it is only a matter of time before one of them is hit with a big lawsuit. Then there are the costs of running such a site—video requires a lot of bandwidth and storage. A rival estimates that YouTube is losing more than $500,000 a month.

即便广告主认真考虑这些想法，无如如何，YouTube和其它的视频共享网络仍面临着其它的困难。例如，他们正在著作权法的真空带中游晃：他们许诺，被要求去除页面中盗版的内容时将立即执行，但碰上大件诉讼只是时间的问题。然后是成本的问题，运营视频网站需要大量的带宽与存储容量，据其竞争者之一估算，YouTuBe每月至少损失50万美元。

Putting paid-for advertisements alongside amateur video clips, perhaps based on keywords or tags, poses another problem. “How do you know the guy in a video doesn’t make a racial slur?” asks Mr McInerney. Many firms will be cautious about letting an automatic system—such as, say, Google’s AdSense—place their ads next to user-generated clips of unknown provenance and with potentially embarrassing contents. (Even so, Guba is testing AdSense for Video, which has not yet been officially launched.)

基于关键字或是标签，在业务爱好者制作的视频旁边添加付费广告，于是这又引发一个新的问题：“你如何知道视频里的人没有种族偏见？” Mr McInerney问到。很多公司设置无意识的自动系统时都谨小慎微，比如说，Google’s AdSense——在将广告放置在一些来源不明，有潜在的令人不堪的内容的剪辑旁边之时都小心翼翼。（即便如此，Guba正在测试未正式发布的视频广告）

For its part, Guba is betting on a combination of advertising plus the sale and rental of commercial video material. Its site offers both free amateur videos and paid-for content, including films from Sony and Warner Brothers. When Guba cut its prices last week, allowing new films to be downloaded for $9.99 and older ones for $4.99, its sales jumped tenfold. Google Video also allows content owners to charge for video. This suggests that internet-video sites are on a collision course with DVD-rental outfits, such as Netflix, which are moving towards the delivery of films via the internet, rather than as discs sent through the post.

在Guba 方面，他们正在进行一场广告销售与出租商业视频素材整合的赌博。其站点既提供业余爱好者制作的视频，又提供付费的内容，其中包括索尼与华纳兄弟的影片。上 周Guba降低了价格之后，他的销量上涨了十倍，下载一部新进影片需花9.99美元，其余的仅需4.99美元。同样，Google Video准许内容持有者对他们的视频进行收费。这说明网络视频站点正处于一个与DVD租赁公司，如Netflix的竞争过程之中，而且，Netfix将 越来越多影片通过网络传播，而邮递光盘的方式则日益式微。

That, in turn, highlights another business model for the 200-odd internet-video sites. During the previous internet bubble, they would have rushed to list their shares as fast as they could; this time around, many will try to be bought by media conglomerates instead. Last week Sony, which has a large film studio and lots of video to promote, bought Grouper, a small video-sharing site, for $65m. And News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch’s media conglomerate, is turning MySpace, its popular social-networking site, into a challenger to YouTube. Little wonder then that the founders of YouTube, Guba and other independent video sites go to great lengths to be quoted saying respectful things about other media moguls.

接 着，让我们把焦点转移到另200多个网络视频站点的商业模式上。在先前的互联网泡沫中，他们会尽其所能让股票迅速上市；而这一次，他们则寻找传媒巨头收购 的机会。就在上一周，拥有大量电影制片厂和大量亟需推广的视频公司——索尼，花6500万美元收购了小型视频分享站点——Grouper,而新闻集团，默多克的传媒巨无霸，正在调整Myspace的战略，这个出色的社会化网络站点，已对YouTobe构成威胁。于是，前边提及的YouTube, Guba及其它独立视频网站的创始人，竭尽全力拍传媒巨头的马屁了，也没有人感到惊讶了。