Facebook與WhatsApp
2023復(fù)習(xí)正是強(qiáng)化復(fù)習(xí)階段，在考研英語中占了40分，所以考研英語閱讀是英語科目中重要的一項(xiàng)。名師老師曾建議過考研生需要堅(jiān)持每天泛讀10-15分鐘的英文原刊。強(qiáng)烈推薦了雜志《經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)人》.雜志中的文章也是考研英語的主要材料來源.希望考研考生認(rèn)真閱讀，快速提高考研英語閱讀水平。 Facebook and WhatsApp Facebook與WhatsApp Getting the messages 即時(shí)通訊，拿下! Why Mark Zuckerberg s social network is payingsuch a whopping sum for a messaging startup 馬克?扎克伯格的網(wǎng)絡(luò)帝國為何花這么大筆錢收購一家初創(chuàng)的即時(shí)通訊公司? THE rivalries among the tech industry s giants have often resembled a Game of Thrones, inwhich companies such as Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple constantly try to invadeone another s online kingdoms. 科技巨頭們的對抗往往跟權(quán)力的游戲里所呈現(xiàn)的相差無幾，就像Facebook、谷歌、亞馬遜和蘋果一樣，他們彼此之間都不停地嘗試著入侵對方的網(wǎng)絡(luò)王國。 On February 19th Facebook took a dramatic step to defend its turf, saying it would pay 19billion for WhatsApp, a messaging service that had also attracted the attention of Google andalmost certainly other suitors. 為了捍衛(wèi)自己的領(lǐng)地，有家企業(yè)則于2月19日邁出了驚人的一步：Facebook宣布將以190億美元的價(jià)格收購WhatsApp。而這是一家同時(shí)吸引了谷歌以及幾乎可以肯定其他一眾追求者的即時(shí)通訊應(yīng)用公司。 Even veterans of Silicon Valley goggled at the staggering sum of money changing hands,which comprises a mixture of cash and shares in Facebook. 這筆交易涵蓋了現(xiàn)金和Facebook的股權(quán)，而其數(shù)額之大就算是在硅谷打滾了多年的行家也為之側(cè)目。 WhatsApp s price tag is the most ever paid for a venture-capital-backed company and givesa startup founded in 2009 a valuation that is greater than that of household names such asSouthwest Airlines and Sony. 這是有史以來針對風(fēng)投支持的創(chuàng)業(yè)公司規(guī)模最大的一筆收購交易，同時(shí)，這次交易也讓2009年創(chuàng)立的WhatsApp估價(jià)比諸如西南航空、索尼之類家喻戶曉的企業(yè)更高。 The deal marks the coming-of-age of messaging apps, which let people send text messagesand share photos and other stuff without incurring charges from telecoms firms. 這筆交易標(biāo)志著即時(shí)通訊軟件的成熟。通過WhatsApp，人們不需要向電話運(yùn)營商付費(fèi)，就能夠發(fā)送信息、分享照片以及一些其他東西。 WhatsApp is free to use for 12 months and then costs a mere 99 cents a year. 人們可以免費(fèi)使用這款軟件長達(dá)12個(gè)月，接著每年僅需99美分便可繼續(xù)使用。 Plenty of other such apps have sprung up, including Viber, which Rakuten, a Japaneseinternet giant, recently bought for 900m, and the immensely popular WeChat, which belongsto Tencent, an innovative Chinese company. 許多相類似的應(yīng)用已經(jīng)在市場中涌現(xiàn)，例如最近被日本網(wǎng)絡(luò)巨頭Rakuten以9億美元收購的應(yīng)用Viber，以及受到極大歡迎的微信，而這是一個(gè)由中國創(chuàng)新企業(yè)騰訊公司所開發(fā)的應(yīng)用。 All of them have benefited from two profound trends that are transforming the technologylandscape. 以上的所有應(yīng)用均得益于兩大影響深遠(yuǎn)的，正改變著科技格局的趨勢。 The first of these is the rapid growth of web-connected smartphones, which has allowedWhatsApp and its rivals to spread like wildfire. 首先便是能夠連接互聯(lián)網(wǎng)的智能手機(jī)迅速普及。這一趨勢讓W(xué)hatsApp以及其對手們能夠像野火一般飛快地蔓延開來，獲得大量的用戶。 Announcing the deal Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook s boss, said WhatsApp had reached 450musers much faster than any other web service. 在宣布交易之時(shí)，F(xiàn)acebook的老板馬克?扎克伯格表示，目前WhatsApp已經(jīng)擁有了4億5千萬用戶，遠(yuǎn)比其他任何網(wǎng)絡(luò)應(yīng)用服務(wù)的用戶要多。 It has also made itself addictive: 72% of its users are active on it every day. 與此同時(shí)，它也成功地使用戶們沉溺其中：每天的活躍用戶數(shù)占總數(shù)的72%。 And the viral nature of its appeal means it has achieved all this without spending a penny onmarketing. 如此強(qiáng)烈的病毒式吸引力意味著這家公司沒有在市場營銷上投入過一分錢，便取得了這一切成就。 Casual-gaming apps are also spreading rapidly on mobile devices. 同樣地，休閑游戲類應(yīng)用正迅速地攻占著人們的移動(dòng)電子設(shè)備。 King.com, which filed for an IPO in New York on February 18th, is a case in point. 英國移動(dòng)游戲公司King.com于2月18日在紐約提交的IPO申請書，便很好地印證了這一點(diǎn)。 The company, which makes the hit game Candy Crush Saga, saw its monthly active userssoar from 67m in the fourth quarter of 2023 to 408m in the same period last year. 這家公司便是知名游戲《糖果粉碎傳奇》的開發(fā)商，而他們的每月活躍用戶數(shù)量從2023年第四季度的6千7百萬上漲至去年同期的4億8千萬。 Its revenues soared too, hitting 1.9 billion last year compared with 164m in 2023. 公司利潤也在飛漲，其數(shù)額從2023年1億6千4百萬美元上漲至去年的19億美元。 The second trend behind WhatsApp s success is the dramatic decline in the cost of buildingstart-ups. WhatsApp成功背后的第二個(gè)趨勢便是創(chuàng)業(yè)成本的大幅降低。 Thanks to things such as cloud computing, which lets young firms buy vast amounts of cheapcomputing capacity, entrepreneurs can create globe-spanning businesses on shoestringbudgets. 在種種因素的作用下，企業(yè)家們可以用極低的成本在全球擴(kuò)展業(yè)務(wù)。例如云計(jì)算，這便是一種能讓新公司廉價(jià)購買大量運(yùn)算能力的方法。 WhatsApp has just 32 software engineers, which means that each one supports some 14musers. WhatsApp僅有32名軟件工程師，也就相當(dāng)于每一位工程師要維護(hù)接近1千4百萬用戶的運(yùn)作。 And the volume of messages it is handling is said to be the equivalent of all the SMSmessages transmitted by the world s telecoms companies. 據(jù)稱，WhatsApp所處理的信息總量已相當(dāng)于全世界所有電話運(yùn)營商所處理的短信量總和。 Indeed, WhatsApp s success in many ways mirrors that of Facebook itself, which came fromnowhere to dominate social networking. 誠然，WhatsApp的成功或多或少復(fù)刻了Facebook自身的發(fā)展模式，他們同樣地是從默默無聞小公司起步，建立起了自己的社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)帝國。 Recently, however, Facebook has been losing some of its cool, especially among youngerusers. 然而，近期Facebook已不再像從前一樣那么吸引人，這一情況在更加年輕的用戶群體中尤為明顯。 That may explain why the famously paranoid Mr Zuckerberg is willing to pay a king sransom for a company that might ultimately eclipse his own creation. 這或許能解釋為何眾所周知的偏執(zhí)狂扎克伯格愿意付出一筆巨資去購買一家可能會(huì)完全超越自己Facebook的公司。 He has spent lavishly before, paying around 1 billion for Instagram, a photo-sharing app, in2023. 而在此之前，他也做過一擲千金式的事情：2023年支付了約10億美元收購。 But does the whopping price tag for WhatsApp make sense? 但是，對WhatsApp進(jìn)行如此高價(jià)的收購真的合理嗎? Assuming it keeps adding users at its current rate of 1m a dayand they end up paying forits serviceit could generate hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. 假設(shè)它依舊能保持每天1百萬的用戶增長速度，接著這批用戶最終將付費(fèi)使用這款應(yīng)用，而這能夠?yàn)楣編沓汕先f的收益。 Twitter, which reported 665m of revenue last year, has a market capitalisation of 30 billion. 據(jù)稱，去年利潤為6億6千5百萬美元的Twitter總市值為300億美元。 Much will depend on how well Mr Zuckerberg gets on with Jan Koum, the boss of WhatsApp,who is joining Facebook s board and will run the app as an independent business. 這筆交易的最終收益情況如何，很大程度上將取決于扎克伯格是否能與簡?庫姆進(jìn)行良好合作。這位WhatsApp的老板將加入Facebook董事會(huì)，并且會(huì)繼續(xù)獨(dú)立運(yùn)營這款應(yīng)用。 Mr Koum, who has a well-known aversion to collecting people s data and plasteringadvertising over his app, seems an odd bedfellow for Facebook. 雖然這位以不采集用戶個(gè)人信息以及回避應(yīng)用廣告推廣而聞名的庫姆，對Facebook來說似乎格格不入。 But the deal was clearly one that he couldn t refuse. 但很顯然，這確實(shí)是一筆讓他無法拒絕的交易。 詞語解釋 1.such as 例如;譬如;諸如 What about future steps such as euro bonds? 諸如歐元聯(lián)盟之類的未來計(jì)劃怎樣? Imaginary problems such as these are usuallyhiding real ones. 像這樣的臆想的問題通常隱藏真實(shí)性的。 2.free to 免費(fèi) Feel free to share in the comments area. 請?jiān)谙旅娴脑u論區(qū)域自由分享。 A gyroscope is just a spinning wheel that is free to rotate. 陀螺就是一個(gè)可以自由旋轉(zhuǎn)的轉(zhuǎn)動(dòng)著的輪子。 3.compare with 與相比;比得上 Life isn t fair-don t compare with or be jealous of others. 生活并不是公平的不要比較也不要嫉妒別人。 Atheists have precious little to compare with this. 相比之下，無神論者的資源就少得可憐。 4.end up 結(jié)束;最終成為 It may end up having the opposite effect. 這或許會(huì)以適得其反而告終。 How did britain end up in this mess? 那英國在這場亂局中將如何收場呢?
2023復(fù)習(xí)正是強(qiáng)化復(fù)習(xí)階段，在考研英語中占了40分，所以考研英語閱讀是英語科目中重要的一項(xiàng)。名師老師曾建議過考研生需要堅(jiān)持每天泛讀10-15分鐘的英文原刊。強(qiáng)烈推薦了雜志《經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)人》.雜志中的文章也是考研英語的主要材料來源.希望考研考生認(rèn)真閱讀，快速提高考研英語閱讀水平。 Facebook and WhatsApp Facebook與WhatsApp Getting the messages 即時(shí)通訊，拿下! Why Mark Zuckerberg s social network is payingsuch a whopping sum for a messaging startup 馬克?扎克伯格的網(wǎng)絡(luò)帝國為何花這么大筆錢收購一家初創(chuàng)的即時(shí)通訊公司? THE rivalries among the tech industry s giants have often resembled a Game of Thrones, inwhich companies such as Facebook, Google, Amazon and Apple constantly try to invadeone another s online kingdoms. 科技巨頭們的對抗往往跟權(quán)力的游戲里所呈現(xiàn)的相差無幾，就像Facebook、谷歌、亞馬遜和蘋果一樣，他們彼此之間都不停地嘗試著入侵對方的網(wǎng)絡(luò)王國。 On February 19th Facebook took a dramatic step to defend its turf, saying it would pay 19billion for WhatsApp, a messaging service that had also attracted the attention of Google andalmost certainly other suitors. 為了捍衛(wèi)自己的領(lǐng)地，有家企業(yè)則于2月19日邁出了驚人的一步：Facebook宣布將以190億美元的價(jià)格收購WhatsApp。而這是一家同時(shí)吸引了谷歌以及幾乎可以肯定其他一眾追求者的即時(shí)通訊應(yīng)用公司。 Even veterans of Silicon Valley goggled at the staggering sum of money changing hands,which comprises a mixture of cash and shares in Facebook. 這筆交易涵蓋了現(xiàn)金和Facebook的股權(quán)，而其數(shù)額之大就算是在硅谷打滾了多年的行家也為之側(cè)目。 WhatsApp s price tag is the most ever paid for a venture-capital-backed company and givesa startup founded in 2009 a valuation that is greater than that of household names such asSouthwest Airlines and Sony. 這是有史以來針對風(fēng)投支持的創(chuàng)業(yè)公司規(guī)模最大的一筆收購交易，同時(shí)，這次交易也讓2009年創(chuàng)立的WhatsApp估價(jià)比諸如西南航空、索尼之類家喻戶曉的企業(yè)更高。 The deal marks the coming-of-age of messaging apps, which let people send text messagesand share photos and other stuff without incurring charges from telecoms firms. 這筆交易標(biāo)志著即時(shí)通訊軟件的成熟。通過WhatsApp，人們不需要向電話運(yùn)營商付費(fèi)，就能夠發(fā)送信息、分享照片以及一些其他東西。 WhatsApp is free to use for 12 months and then costs a mere 99 cents a year. 人們可以免費(fèi)使用這款軟件長達(dá)12個(gè)月，接著每年僅需99美分便可繼續(xù)使用。 Plenty of other such apps have sprung up, including Viber, which Rakuten, a Japaneseinternet giant, recently bought for 900m, and the immensely popular WeChat, which belongsto Tencent, an innovative Chinese company. 許多相類似的應(yīng)用已經(jīng)在市場中涌現(xiàn)，例如最近被日本網(wǎng)絡(luò)巨頭Rakuten以9億美元收購的應(yīng)用Viber，以及受到極大歡迎的微信，而這是一個(gè)由中國創(chuàng)新企業(yè)騰訊公司所開發(fā)的應(yīng)用。 All of them have benefited from two profound trends that are transforming the technologylandscape. 以上的所有應(yīng)用均得益于兩大影響深遠(yuǎn)的，正改變著科技格局的趨勢。 The first of these is the rapid growth of web-connected smartphones, which has allowedWhatsApp and its rivals to spread like wildfire. 首先便是能夠連接互聯(lián)網(wǎng)的智能手機(jī)迅速普及。這一趨勢讓W(xué)hatsApp以及其對手們能夠像野火一般飛快地蔓延開來，獲得大量的用戶。 Announcing the deal Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook s boss, said WhatsApp had reached 450musers much faster than any other web service. 在宣布交易之時(shí)，F(xiàn)acebook的老板馬克?扎克伯格表示，目前WhatsApp已經(jīng)擁有了4億5千萬用戶，遠(yuǎn)比其他任何網(wǎng)絡(luò)應(yīng)用服務(wù)的用戶要多。 It has also made itself addictive: 72% of its users are active on it every day. 與此同時(shí)，它也成功地使用戶們沉溺其中：每天的活躍用戶數(shù)占總數(shù)的72%。 And the viral nature of its appeal means it has achieved all this without spending a penny onmarketing. 如此強(qiáng)烈的病毒式吸引力意味著這家公司沒有在市場營銷上投入過一分錢，便取得了這一切成就。 Casual-gaming apps are also spreading rapidly on mobile devices. 同樣地，休閑游戲類應(yīng)用正迅速地攻占著人們的移動(dòng)電子設(shè)備。 King.com, which filed for an IPO in New York on February 18th, is a case in point. 英國移動(dòng)游戲公司King.com于2月18日在紐約提交的IPO申請書，便很好地印證了這一點(diǎn)。 The company, which makes the hit game Candy Crush Saga, saw its monthly active userssoar from 67m in the fourth quarter of 2023 to 408m in the same period last year. 這家公司便是知名游戲《糖果粉碎傳奇》的開發(fā)商，而他們的每月活躍用戶數(shù)量從2023年第四季度的6千7百萬上漲至去年同期的4億8千萬。 Its revenues soared too, hitting 1.9 billion last year compared with 164m in 2023. 公司利潤也在飛漲，其數(shù)額從2023年1億6千4百萬美元上漲至去年的19億美元。 The second trend behind WhatsApp s success is the dramatic decline in the cost of buildingstart-ups. WhatsApp成功背后的第二個(gè)趨勢便是創(chuàng)業(yè)成本的大幅降低。 Thanks to things such as cloud computing, which lets young firms buy vast amounts of cheapcomputing capacity, entrepreneurs can create globe-spanning businesses on shoestringbudgets. 在種種因素的作用下，企業(yè)家們可以用極低的成本在全球擴(kuò)展業(yè)務(wù)。例如云計(jì)算，這便是一種能讓新公司廉價(jià)購買大量運(yùn)算能力的方法。 WhatsApp has just 32 software engineers, which means that each one supports some 14musers. WhatsApp僅有32名軟件工程師，也就相當(dāng)于每一位工程師要維護(hù)接近1千4百萬用戶的運(yùn)作。 And the volume of messages it is handling is said to be the equivalent of all the SMSmessages transmitted by the world s telecoms companies. 據(jù)稱，WhatsApp所處理的信息總量已相當(dāng)于全世界所有電話運(yùn)營商所處理的短信量總和。 Indeed, WhatsApp s success in many ways mirrors that of Facebook itself, which came fromnowhere to dominate social networking. 誠然，WhatsApp的成功或多或少復(fù)刻了Facebook自身的發(fā)展模式，他們同樣地是從默默無聞小公司起步，建立起了自己的社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)帝國。 Recently, however, Facebook has been losing some of its cool, especially among youngerusers. 然而，近期Facebook已不再像從前一樣那么吸引人，這一情況在更加年輕的用戶群體中尤為明顯。 That may explain why the famously paranoid Mr Zuckerberg is willing to pay a king sransom for a company that might ultimately eclipse his own creation. 這或許能解釋為何眾所周知的偏執(zhí)狂扎克伯格愿意付出一筆巨資去購買一家可能會(huì)完全超越自己Facebook的公司。 He has spent lavishly before, paying around 1 billion for Instagram, a photo-sharing app, in2023. 而在此之前，他也做過一擲千金式的事情：2023年支付了約10億美元收購。 But does the whopping price tag for WhatsApp make sense? 但是，對WhatsApp進(jìn)行如此高價(jià)的收購真的合理嗎? Assuming it keeps adding users at its current rate of 1m a dayand they end up paying forits serviceit could generate hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. 假設(shè)它依舊能保持每天1百萬的用戶增長速度，接著這批用戶最終將付費(fèi)使用這款應(yīng)用，而這能夠?yàn)楣編沓汕先f的收益。 Twitter, which reported 665m of revenue last year, has a market capitalisation of 30 billion. 據(jù)稱，去年利潤為6億6千5百萬美元的Twitter總市值為300億美元。 Much will depend on how well Mr Zuckerberg gets on with Jan Koum, the boss of WhatsApp,who is joining Facebook s board and will run the app as an independent business. 這筆交易的最終收益情況如何，很大程度上將取決于扎克伯格是否能與簡?庫姆進(jìn)行良好合作。這位WhatsApp的老板將加入Facebook董事會(huì)，并且會(huì)繼續(xù)獨(dú)立運(yùn)營這款應(yīng)用。 Mr Koum, who has a well-known aversion to collecting people s data and plasteringadvertising over his app, seems an odd bedfellow for Facebook. 雖然這位以不采集用戶個(gè)人信息以及回避應(yīng)用廣告推廣而聞名的庫姆，對Facebook來說似乎格格不入。 But the deal was clearly one that he couldn t refuse. 但很顯然，這確實(shí)是一筆讓他無法拒絕的交易。 詞語解釋 1.such as 例如;譬如;諸如 What about future steps such as euro bonds? 諸如歐元聯(lián)盟之類的未來計(jì)劃怎樣? Imaginary problems such as these are usuallyhiding real ones. 像這樣的臆想的問題通常隱藏真實(shí)性的。 2.free to 免費(fèi) Feel free to share in the comments area. 請?jiān)谙旅娴脑u論區(qū)域自由分享。 A gyroscope is just a spinning wheel that is free to rotate. 陀螺就是一個(gè)可以自由旋轉(zhuǎn)的轉(zhuǎn)動(dòng)著的輪子。 3.compare with 與相比;比得上 Life isn t fair-don t compare with or be jealous of others. 生活并不是公平的不要比較也不要嫉妒別人。 Atheists have precious little to compare with this. 相比之下，無神論者的資源就少得可憐。 4.end up 結(jié)束;最終成為 It may end up having the opposite effect. 這或許會(huì)以適得其反而告終。 How did britain end up in this mess? 那英國在這場亂局中將如何收場呢?
