WHEN Snapchat first became popular in 2013, many thought the messaging app would disappear almost as quickly as its vanishing messages. Instead, it has become one of the most intriguing internet firms to emerge in years. When Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, goes public at an expected valuation of $20bn-25bn—the IPO is expected in March—its market debut will be the most closely watched since Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce giant, floated in 2014. Snap’s offering documents may be filed publicly as soon as this week.
当Snapchat在2013年首次爆红时，很多人认为这一款即时通讯应用的消失的速度与它的信息消失的速度一样快。可是，它却成为了近年来最让人好奇的互联网企业。当Snapchat的母公司Snap预计以200亿美元至250亿美元的区间市值上市时，这一次在三月启动的IPO将继2014年中国电商巨头阿里巴巴之后的最受人关注的上市活动。Snap的上市的文件将会在本周向公众提交。
Snapchat has captivated youngsters in the West with its quickly disappearing content and playful features. It appears to have connected with youth more successfully than older rivals such as Facebook (or its messaging service, WhatsApp). Users share digitally enhanced photos and videos of themselves vomiting rainbows and morphing their faces into animal masks. Around 41% of Americans aged 18 to 34 use the ephemeral messaging service every day, and 150m people globally spend time on it every day.
Snapchat成为西方年轻人的钟爱的应用，发出的信息会快速消失，同时还拥有一些好玩的功能。相比成立时间更长的Facebook(及其旗下的短信应用WhatsApp)，Snapchat更为成功地吸引住了年轻人。这款应用的用户分享美化过的数字图片以及视频，如吞食彩虹或在脸上戴上动物面具。
在美国，有41%的18-34岁的人每天都会使用这一款信息有效期很短的应用，而全球每天有1500万人使用。
Older grown-ups should pay attention too. Snapchat is experimenting with new technologies, such as augmented reality (AR) and wearable devices. A large share of people who have used AR will have experienced it on Snapchat, where users can overlay computer-generated images on photos and videos (see article).
一些年龄更长都也在关注它。Snapchat也在实验新的技术，如现实增强技术和穿戴设备。很多使用现实增强设备的人也会在Snapchat做体验，而在其中，用户可以将电脑生成的形象放在图片或视频里。
The firm’s IPO prospectus is expected to describe not an internet or communications company but a “camera company”. Snapchat has prospered from access to the camera on every smartphone, and now it wants to sell hardware as well. Its new sunglasses, called Spectacles, sell for $130 and enable users to record video from their exact line of sight. They have caught the attention of analysts, who are impressed by the glasses’ ambition, functionality and clean design.
对于Snap的IPO预期，预计会是定位为一家照像企业而不是互联网通讯企业。它此前因出现在每一部智能手机里而名声大噪，而现在却想销售硬件了。它最新推出一款名为”Spectacles“的太阳镜，销价130美元，能让用户拍摄实际光线中的景色。由于这款眼镜展现的野心、功能以及简洁的设计等，这款设备引起了市场分析师的关注。
How well it fares as a public company will also serve as a litmus test of whether it is possible to prosper in the shadow of digital behemoths like Facebook and Google. Snapchat has a different outlook. Facebook creates permanent records of users’ lives; Snapchat offers liberating impermanence. On most social-media sites, people post about their achievements to a huge circle of acquaintances; Snapchat’s users share images of themselves looking silly with smaller groups of friends.
Snap作为一家上市公司能走多远，这将成为他在Facebook和Google等数字巨头的阴影下能否成功的试金石。Snapchat的前景则有所不同。Facebook永久性地拥有用户状态记录；Snapchat的服务则是过用即焚。在大多数的社交网站上，用户向人数众多的朋友圈里上传他们的成就；Snapchat的用户则是与数量更少的朋友圈分享看上去傻乎乎的照片。
Rainbows, streaks, and unicorn faces
彩虹、条纹和装饰着犄角的脸
Snapchat started in 2011 as Picaboo. It was created by three members of a fraternity at Stanford University: Reggie Brown, Bobby Murphy and Evan Spiegel (now Snap’s chief executive). The app, which they later renamed, was not an overnight sensation that crashed the internet, as Thefacebook did at Harvard. It lay virtually undiscovered for some time, until high-school girls discovered it and started using the app to send (sometimes risqué) messages.
2011年，Snapchat以Picaboo身份面市。是由三位斯坦佛大学兄弟会成员创立的，他们分别是雷吉·布朗(Reggie Brown)、博比·墨菲(Bobby Murphy)和伊万·斯皮格（Evan Spiegel）（现任Snap首席执行官）。应用后来改名Snapchat，但却并非如Facebook在哈佛大学里那样一夜爆红于互联网。它一度无人知晓，直到高中女生们发现了它，开始用来发信息（有时是不雅信息）。
Mr Spiegel has proven himself to be creative in devising new features for Snapchat’s app and in imagining how it might evolve. At first it was a one-to-one messaging function for people to send disappearing “snaps” to one another. Three years ago Mr Spiegel launched a one-to-many broadcast function, called “stories”, where people can string together images and videos and share them with all their friends at once. In 2015 it launched “Discover”, where professional publishers offer a selection of disappearing articles and videos tailored to millennials (The Economist publishes on Discover). These features offer elements of scarcity and urgency that bring people back repeatedly.
斯皮格证明了自己富有创造力，给Snapchat新增了很多新功能，并设想出了它的升级路径。最初，Snapchat拥有一对一的信息发送功能，而信息在发送给对方之后就会消失。三年前，斯皮格上线了一个一对多的广播功能，并称之为”故事“。用户将图片和视频串在一起，一次性地与朋友分享。在2015年，Snapchat上线了”发现“功能，专业的内容发布者能发布专门为”千禧一代“制作的阅后即焚的文章和视频。这些上线的功能具有稀缺性和紧迫感，迫使用户不断地访问应用。
Snapchat has innovated in other ways, too. It shows users how many snaps they have sent and received since joining, and they try to keep this score high. It invented “streaks” that keep track of how many consecutive days friends have sent messages back and forth. When Braden Allen, a 16-year-old in Dallas whose tally of sent and received snaps stands at around 170,000, needed a break from Snapchat to study, he gave his login information to a friend to keep sending on his behalf.
Snapchat在其它方面也有创新。它会显示用户加入后上传和接收帖子的数量，而用户还要让这个数字尽可能地高。
它还发明了时间段，记录好友连续发送和接受信息的天数。17岁的达拉斯少年布莱登·艾伦（Braden Allen）在Snapchat上收发的信息高达17万条，多得需要Snapchat花不少时间才能研究透。然而，这位少年却将账户给了自己的一位朋友，让他代自己发信息。
Lenses are another distinctive feature. When people take selfies, they can choose to alter their appearance, becoming an animal, switching faces with a friend or doing other fantastical things with the app’s facial-recognition technology. Snapchat has quietly become the most-used augmented reality product in the world, says Ben Thompson of Stratechery, a research firm.
滤镜是Snapchat的另一个与众不同的功能。人们自拍的时候，会选择不同的面目，选择一个动物头像，与朋友换脸，或是用Snapchat的一些面部识别技术用一些别的有意思的事。市场研究机构Stratechery的本·汤普森（Ben Thompson）表示，Snapchat在不知不觉之中成为了全球使用率最高的现实增强应用。
Although Snap encourages users to be silly on its app, it hopes to be taken seriously as a business. It will need to decide what approach it should take when using information about users to target ads. Mr Spiegel has called the practice “creepy” in the past. Yet Snap may need to share more data about its users; Mr Spiegel has indicated that he may be willing to do this.
尽管Snapchat鼓励用户以傻瓜式的方式使用应用，却也希望外界将之视为一家企业。它需要决定以采取何种方式使用用户的信息，用于广告。斯皮格曾称这种方式没有节操。然而，Snap可能得交出用户更多的数据；斯皮格之前曾表示愿意这么做。
The company has started to allow advertising in between users’ stories and in the midst of publishers’ articles on Discover. Brands can also buy sponsored lenses. For example, Taco Bell, a fast-food chain, paid for a lens that allowed users to change their faces into tacos. These promotions can be expensive, at around $550,000-800,000 for a lens that is available across America for a day, and can take some months to prepare. Snap insists on keeping some creative control, and can veto projects it thinks look too much like basic advertising. That has irked some brands in the past.
Snap开始允许在用户的“故事”中间插入广告，也允许在'发现'频道里的发布商文章里插广告。各个品牌也能购买一些付费滤镜。例如，快餐连锁品牌Taco Bell赞助了一款滤镜，能让用户将脸变成一张玉米薄饼卷。这一些推广方式费用高昂，在美国，一款滤镜一天的费用在55万至80万美元之间，并需要等待好几个月的时间。Snap坚持广告要有创意，并会否绝掉一些认为是过于普通的广告。这种作法之前惹恼过一些品牌商。
Snapchat is nowhere near earning the sort of ad revenues that Google and Facebook bring in. Those two scoop 58% of digital advertising in America and last year claimed nearly all of the market’s growth. One of the world’s largest advertising agencies spent $60m on Snapchat in 2016, compared with $1bn on Facebook. The same agency expects to spend $170m on Snapchat this year. Snap could have around $1bn of revenue in 2017, three times its total sales in 2016. Advertisers certainly welcome the prospect of having an alternative to the Facebook-Google duopoly, says Chris Vollmer of PwC, a consultancy.
Snapchat在广告收入方面根本无法与Google和Facebook相提并论。这两家巨头占据了美国数字广告58%的份额，并在2016声称将整个市场的增长纳入囊中。2016年，全球一家最大的广告代理商在Snapchat上的支出为600万美元，而在Facebook上则为10亿美元。这家广告代理商预计2017年在Snapchat上的广告投放为1.7亿美元。Snap2017年的收入预计约有10亿美元，为2016年的三倍。普华永道的克里斯·沃尔墨尔（Chris Vollmer）表示，广告主当然喜欢出现一个能替代Facebook-Google双雄的广告平台。
Yet there are questions over how large Snapchat’s user base can become, and whether it can support the high stockmarket valuation that is talked of. The app has yet to establish that it has strong appeal for older users, for example. In emerging markets it costs more to use lots of data on smartphones, and Snapchat’s data-intensive app is less widely used. Brian Wieser, an internet analyst, reckons that Snapchat is an “important niche player” but that it will never achieve the scale of Facebook. It doesn’t have to target more than a billion daily users to be a valuable company, but Mr Spiegel will need to be careful not oversell the app’s potential reach, as Twitter did when it went public in 2013 promising to attract “the largest audience in the world”.
然而，外界质疑Snapchat用户数量规模会有多大，以及它能否支撑住一个津津乐道的市值。还有就是，这款阅后即焚的应用还没有形成对年长用户的吸引力。在新兴的市场，要在智能手机上使用大量数据的成本要更高一些，而Snapchat这一类数据量大型应用的使用广度还不多。互联网分析析布莱恩·威瑟（Brian Wieser）认为，Snapchat是一个重要的细分市场的角色，但永远无法实现Facebook的规模。要成为一个价值连城的企业，它不必瞄准日活用户达到10亿的目标，不过，斯皮格得小心谨慎，不要浪费了这款应用的用户数量潜力——Twitter在2013年上市时就是这么做的，当时它承诺要实现全球用户最多的目标。
He has so far focused on Western markets, whose users are most valuable to advertisers, in contrast to Facebook and Twitter, which emphasise their global reach. He is expected to point to high user engagement with Snapchat, rather than relentless user growth, as the gauge investors should watch. This will require a shift in thinking for stockmarket investors, who have been trained by Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and several other internet firms to demand fast-growing audiences.
目前为止，斯皮格关注的重点还是放在西方市场，其中的用户对广告主来说是最有价值的，而Facebook和Twitter则是放眼全球用户。预计斯皮格会以用户与Snapchat的重度粘度为目标，而不是用户数量增长，这是大量的投资者要密切关注的地方。对于股市投资者来说，这需要在思想上做出转变，因为他们受受Facebook、Twitter、领英等互联网企业的洗脑，要求的是快速的用户增长。
Snap’s profit margins in its various business lines may also disappoint: they are unlikely to be as generous as those of Google and Facebook, which both fulfil a lot of their ad orders using automated programmes. Because its ads tend more often to be individually designed, it relies on a large, human salesforce. Selling also takes more time, as it does in television.
在各个业务线，Snap的纯利润可能会令人失望：这些业务不可能如Google和Facebook那样赚钱，而后者通过学习自动化程序来完成广告下单业务。Snapchat的广告通常更多的是个性化定制的，因此更多地依赖于大量的地面销售团队。与电视广告一样，销售需要更多的时间。
Mr Spiegel will also need to prove his ability to lead. Many of his boosters compare him to the late Steve Jobs for his creative, perfectionist vision of products. He may resemble Mr Jobs in more negative ways, too. He is secretive and controls information tightly. No one but Mr Spiegel—not even the board and other top executives—knows all the important details of the firm’s strategy and future plans. He is off-limits to most employees and travels between Snap’s buildings in a black Range Rover with a security detail.
斯皮格还需要证明他的领导能力。许多鼓吹他的人将他比作过世的乔布斯：富有创造力、所示尽善尽美的产品。他也可能更多地拥有了乔布斯的缺点。他口风紧，严格地掌握信息。只有斯皮格，甚至只有董事会和另外几个高管，才了解Snap的战略和未来的规划。他不与员工接触，只是开着黑色的路虎，还着保密信息在Snap的各个大楼间穿梭。
Some early backers also privately express concern that the talent pool behind him is not as experienced as they would like. Adult supervision will come from Michael Lynton, a seasoned entertainment executive, who is resigning from running the film studio of Japan’s Sony to serve as Snap’s chairman. But there are few like him at the company.
一些早期的支持者曾私下里担心，除了他之外，决策团队的经验并一定丰富。经验丰富的管理来自有娱乐行业管理背景的迈克尔·林登（Michael Lynton）。他从日本电影公司索尼离职，加盟Snap，作董事会主席。不过，在Snap，像林登这样的人凤毛麟角。
The competition against Facebook and Google (which owns YouTube, an online-video site, against which Snapchat will directly compete for ad dollars) is unlikely to let up. Facebook tried to buy Snapchat for $3bn in 2013, and has since then copied many of its popular features. Last summer Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, launched its own “stories” feature; its parent company is now testing the idea of rolling out this feature on its own social network. Usage of Snapchat stories has declined significantly since Instagram stories began. That could shake the faith of some Snapolytes, who believed that Snapchat had sufficient allure to keep its young users away from Facebook’s properties and those of other internet firms.
与Facebook和Google的竞争不会停止，而Snapchat与Google旗下的视频网站YouTube在广告业务方面有着直接的竞争。2013年，Facebook意欲以30亿美元的价格收购Snapchat，并且之后还多次抄袭过Snapchat的多个受欢迎功能。在2016年夏，Facebook旗下的Instagram上线了自己的“故事”功能，而Facebook正在自己的网站上测试推出同样的功能。在Instagramg的“故事”功能推出之后，Snapchat的使用度极剧下滑。这种情况让Snap忠粉们的信念产生动摇，因为这些人相信Snapchat对年轻人有充分的吸引力，不会使用Facebook以及其他互联网功能的应用。
The public offering stands as evidence that Snap wants to stay independent. But Facebook or Google could still buy it. “That is why I would not short the stock,” says one hedge-funder, who is sceptical about the high valuation it is likely to receive. Mr Spiegel must know that his firm, as one of the only real threats to the two giants, would be a prize for either of them.
Snap上市表明它想保持独立性。可是，Facebook或Google仍有可能会收购它。“这是我为什么不看空它的原因，”一位对冲基金经理说道。他对于Snapchat可能的高估值观点表示怀疑。斯皮格必须了解到，作为一家能对Facebook和Google产生威胁的企业，他的企业对这两家企业而言是一个奖励。
If Snap wants to survive as an independent firm, he may need to make some smart acquisitions of his own, as Facebook did by buying Instagram and WhatsApp. One opportunity may be visual search. Snapchat’s users are using their cameras to capture the world around them. When they point their smartphones at objects, they could be served with advertising. Only Mr Spiegel knows the plan. But in the highly concentrated internet ecosystem, companies increasingly must eat or risk being eaten. The coming years will show whether Snap is predator or prey.
如果Snap希望能以独立企业的形式生存下来，斯皮格可能需要自己作出一些收购行为，一如Facebook就收购了Instagram和WhatsApp。一个潜在的收购机会可能是视觉搜索。Snapchat的用户使用手机的摄像机拍摄自己身边的景色。在他们将自己的手机对着东西拍的时候，就可以有广告的服务出现。只有斯皮格知道这个计划。不过，在这个高度集中的互联网生态体系之中，企业越来越多地面临要不收购，要不被收购的局面。在接下来的几年里，会知道Snap是收购者还是被收购者。
编辑：翻吧君
来源：经济学人
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