原文標題：
Elon Musk v Mark Zuckerberg
Social-media smackdown
With Threads, Meta hopes to capitalise on Twitter’s travails
埃隆·馬斯克 v 馬克·扎克伯格
社交媒體大比拼
Twitter陷入困境，Meta趁虛而入，發(fā)布競品Threads

Punch-up in the public square
公共廣場上的打斗

[Paragraph 1]

IN ONE CORNER is Mark Zuckerberg: 39 years old, five foot seven inches and, if his selfies are to be believed, a wizard at jiu-jitsu.

角落里有一個人，他是馬克·扎克伯格：39 歲，身高 5 英尺 7 英寸，如果他的自拍是真的話，他是一個柔術高手。

In the other corner stands Elon Musk: 13 years older, six inches taller and considerably heavier, with a special move known as the walrus (“I just lie on top of my opponent & do nothing”).

另一個角落里是埃隆·馬斯克：比對手年長13 歲，身高 6 英寸，體重也重得多，他有一招特別的動作叫海象（“我只是躺在對手身上，什么也不做”）。

The two billionaires have agreed to a cage fight, with Mr Musk saying on June 29th that it might take place at the Roman Colosseum.
這兩位億萬富翁已同意進行一場籠式搏斗，馬斯克先生在6月29日表示可能會在羅馬大競技場舉行。

[Paragraph 2]

On July 5th Meta, Mr Zuckerberg’s firm, added a new app to its social-media empire. Threads, a text-based network, looks a lot like Twitter, the app Mr Musk bought last October for $44bn. An almighty social-media smackdown is about to begin.
7 月 5 日，扎克伯格在 Meta的社交媒體帝國中添加了一款新的應用程序。Threads 是一個基于文本的社交平臺，功能跟推特很像。馬斯克去年 10月斥資440億美元收購了推特。一場聲勢浩大的社交媒體大比拼即將開始。

[Paragraph 3]
Mr Musk’s tenure at Twitter has been bruising for many parties.
馬斯克在管理推特期間，對許多方都造成了傷害。

About 80% of the nearly 8,000 employees he inherited have been laid off, to cut costs. Amid a glitchy service, users have started to drift away, believes eMarketer, a research firm (see chart).
他接手時約有8000名員工，為了削減成本，80%左右的員工被解雇。研究公司 eMarketer 認為，由于服務頻出故障，用戶已經(jīng)開始流失（見圖表）。

The introduction on July 1st of a paywall, limiting the number of tweets that can be seen by those who do not cough up $8 a month, may repel more.
7月1日推出了付費業(yè)務，那些不愿支付8美元/月的用戶看到的推文數(shù)量有限，這可能會引起更多用戶流失。

Advertisers have fled: Twitter’s ad sales this year will be 28% lower than last, forecasts eMarketer.
廣告商紛紛撤離：eMarketer 預測，推特今年的廣告銷售額將比去年下降 28%。

In May Fidelity, a financial-services firm, estimated that the company had lost about two-thirds of its value since Mr Musk agreed to buy it.
5月，金融服務公司“富達”估計，自馬斯克同意收購推特以來，推特已蒸發(fā)了約2/3的市值。

[Paragraph 4]
From this chaos, the clearest winner is Mr Zuckerberg.
從這場混戰(zhàn)中，很明顯贏家是扎克伯格。

By 2021 his business had become synonymous with misinformation and bile.
到 2021 年，他的主業(yè)已經(jīng)成了誤導和惡語的代名詞。

He then irked investors by using his all-powerful position at the firm to pour billions into the metaverse, an unproven passion project that looks years away from making money. No one in Silicon Valley was more polarising.
然后，他通過利用自己在公司中的強勢地位，在元宇宙這個未經(jīng)證實的激情項目上投入了數(shù)十億美元，看起來離盈利還有數(shù)年的時間，這讓投資者很不爽。硅谷沒有人比他更兩極分化的了。

[Paragraph 5]
Today Mr Musk’s erratic handling of Twitter makes Mr Zuckerberg’s stewardship of Meta look like a model of good corporate governance.
如今，馬斯克對推特飄忽不定的管理方式使扎克伯格對 Meta 的管理看起來像是良好的公司管理典范。

Mr Musk remains more popular than Mr Zuckerberg among Americans (who also fancy his odds in the cage), according to polls from YouGov.
根據(jù) YouGov 的民意調(diào)查，美國人對馬斯克的支持仍然高于對扎克伯格的支持（美國人認為馬斯克的勝算更大）。

But Mr Zuckerberg’s approval rating is now the highest it has been in over three years.
但是扎克伯格的支持率目前達到了三年多來的最高水平。

[Paragraph 6]
Meta eyes another, commercial victory. Various startups have tried to capitalise on Twitter’s travails, with little success.
Meta 看到了另一個商業(yè)取勝機會。許多初創(chuàng)公司都試圖利用推特的困境趁虛而入，但成功案例很少。

[Paragraph 7]
Meta’s effort, Threads, has a better shot. Cloning rivals is what Meta does best.
Meta 的Threads 有更大機會。模仿競爭對手是Meta的長項。

In 2016, as Snapchat’s disappearing “stories” became popular, Mr Zuckerberg unveiled Instagram Stories, a similar product which helped to keep Instagram on top.
2016 年，隨著 Snapchat“讀后即焚”的流行，扎克伯格推出了仿品Instagram Stories，幫助 Instagram 保住了霸主地位。

Last year, Meta rolled out Reels. In April Mr Zuckerberg said Reels had helped to increase the time spent on Instagram by nearly a quarter.
去年，Meta 推出了 Reels。扎克伯格在4月份表示，Reels讓Instagram 用戶的使用時間增加了近1/4。

[Paragraph 8]
Threads also has a head start. Unlike Reels, it is its own app. But it lets Instagrammers use their existing login details and follow all the same people with one click.
Threads 也有先發(fā)優(yōu)勢。與 Reels 不同，Threads是獨立的應用程序。但它允許Instagram用戶使用現(xiàn)有的登錄信息，并通過一鍵點擊就可以關注所有相同的人。

Some 87% of Twitter users already use Instagram, according to DataReportal, a research firm; they now have a near-frictionless alternative to Twitter.
據(jù)研究公司 DataReportal的數(shù)據(jù)，約 87% 的推特用戶在使用 Instagram；他們現(xiàn)在有了一個近乎完美的推特替代品。

Will they switch? For some, it may be enough to have a network that is “sanely run”, as Meta’s chief product officer put it recently.
他們會切換過來嗎？Meta 首席產(chǎn)品官最近發(fā)言稱，對一些人來說，擁有一個能“正常運行”的社交平臺就夠了。

Mr Musk may have provided a shove to the others by announcing a paywall days before Threads’ launch.
在Threads發(fā)布前幾天，馬斯克推出了付費業(yè)務，這可能會把用戶推向Threads。

[Paragraph 9]
By Meta’s standards, Twitter’s business is tiny, with one-eighth as many users as Facebook, the world’s largest social network. In 2021 Twitter’s revenue was $5.1bn, against Meta’s $116bn.
以Meta為標準的話，推特的業(yè)務規(guī)模很小，用戶數(shù)量只有全球最大社交平臺 Facebook 的1/8。2021年，推特的營收為 51 億美元，而 Meta 的營收為 1160 億美元。

And those meagre earnings bring big problems.Few platforms attract as many angry oddballs as Twitter.
而微薄收入?yún)s帶來了大問題。很少有平臺像推特那樣吸引那么多憤怒又古怪的用戶。

Lately Meta has shied away from promoting news, which brings political controversy and seems not to delight users. News is a big part of what Twitter does.
最近，Meta避開了新聞業(yè)務，因為新聞會帶來政治爭議，且新聞無法令用戶滿意。而新聞是推特業(yè)務的重要組成部分。

[Paragraph 10]
Why, then, does Mr Zuckerberg think Threads is worth the headache?
那么，為什么扎克伯格認為Threads是一個令人頭疼的對手呢？

One reason is advertising. Twitter has never made much money out of its users because it knows little about them.
原因之一是廣告。推特未能從用戶身上賺到大錢，因為它對用戶知之甚少。

Between half and two-thirds of those who read tweets are not logged in, estimates Simon Kemp of DataReportal. Many registered users are “l(fā)urkers”, who view others’ feeds but seldom engage.
DataReportal的西蒙·坎普估計，大約1/2-2/3閱讀推文的用戶沒有登錄。許多注冊用戶都是“潛水者”，他們查看別人的動態(tài)，但很少參與互動。

Meta, which knows a lot about its users from its other apps, can hit them with well-targeted ads in Threads from day one.
Meta公司從旗下應用中了解了很多用戶的情況，從第一天起，Threads就可以向用戶精準投放廣告。

[Paragraph 11]
Meta’s other possible motive relates to artificial intelligence (AI).
Meta的另一個優(yōu)勢與人工智能有關。

Online forums like Reddit are scrambling to monetise the billions of words that they hold. Mr Musk has said that Twitter’s paywall is a response to “EXTREME levels of data scraping” by AI firms.
Reddit這類在線論壇正竭力將它們所持有的數(shù)十億字的內(nèi)容變現(xiàn)。馬斯克表示，推特的付費業(yè)務是對人工智能公司“極度抓取數(shù)據(jù)”的回應。

In setting up a text-based network alongside the visual feeds of Facebook and Instagram, Meta gets a source of rich language data.
通過在Facebook和Instagram的視覺信息流旁邊建立一個基于文本的社交平臺，Meta獲得了豐富的語言數(shù)據(jù)來源。

[Paragraph 12]
Launching a social network is hard. Even with its 3.8bn existing users Meta has had its share of failures: Facebook Dating remains unloved and the company’s gaming and shopping initiatives have yet to take off.
推出社交平臺很困難。即使是在擁有38億現(xiàn)有用戶的情況下，Meta也經(jīng)歷了一些失敗案例：Facebook Dating仍然不受歡迎，該公司的游戲和電商計劃也尚未起飛。

But as Twitter bleeds users and advertisers, and as Mr Musk’s management continues on its eccentric path, the opportunity is becoming bigger.
但隨著推特用戶和廣告商的流失，以及馬斯克在古怪的管理道路上越走越遠，Meta的勝算越來越大。

Regardless of who prevails in the cage, Mr Zuckerberg may come away with the spoils.
不管誰在這場競爭中獲勝，扎克伯格可能會贏得戰(zhàn)利品。

（恭喜讀完，本篇英語詞匯量900左右，有刪減）
原文出自：2023年7月8日《The Economist》Business版塊

精讀筆記來源于：自由英語之路

本文翻譯整理: Irene本文編輯校對: Irene
僅供個人英語學習交流使用。

【補充資料】（來自于網(wǎng)絡）
Threads是Facebook推出的一款社交平臺，旨在為用戶提供一個私密、安全的空間來與親密的朋友和親人進行溝通和分享。Threads主要以短信和照片分享為核心功能，與Facebook Messenger緊密結合。用戶可以通過Threads與Facebook好友進行一對一或群組聊天，同時還可以將自己的狀態(tài)通過動態(tài)貼紙和照片分享給好友。強調(diào)用戶的隱私和安全。用戶可以選擇自己要與哪些好友分享自己的動態(tài)，并可以隨時更改。用戶還可以設定自動狀態(tài)功能，根據(jù)當前的位置、移動速度和電量等信息來自動更新狀態(tài)。例如當用戶在開車或旅行時，Threads可以顯示用戶的狀態(tài)為“正在開車”或“正在旅行”。暗模式可以使界面更加舒適，減少眼睛的疲勞。

【重點句子】（3個）
Mr Musk’s tenure at Twitter has been bruising for many parties.
馬斯克在管理推特期間，對許多方都造成了傷害。

From this chaos, the clearest winner is Mr Zuckerberg.
從這場混戰(zhàn)中，很明顯贏家是扎克伯格。

In setting up a text-based network alongside the visual feeds of Facebook and Instagram, Meta gets a source of rich language data.
通過在Facebook和Instagram的視覺信息流旁邊建立一個基于文本的社交平臺，Meta獲得了豐富的語言數(shù)據(jù)來源。