拒絕社交網絡標籤的Pinterest
Ben Silbermann, Pinterest: going global, modestlyBen Silbermann screws up his face as he considers what he could buy now he has been officially declared a billionaire by Forbes.
雖然本•西爾伯曼(Ben Silbermann)已經正式被《福布斯》(Forbes)宣佈成爲一名億萬富翁，但他此時正眉頭緊鎖，思考該買些什麼。
As Pinterest co-founder and chief executive, he helped create the clean, white online scrapbook where more than 100m users catalogue their desires. The 33-year-old has some 750,000 followers of his pins on subjects including art, recipes and a travel bucket list. But he does not have a “billionaire” pinboard for the life stage that crept up on him as Pinterest became one of the world’s most valuable technology start-ups.
作爲Pinterest聯合創始人兼首席執行官，他幫助創建了這個簡潔、白色的在線剪貼簿網站，有逾1億用戶在上面分類收藏自己的願望物品。33歲的西爾伯曼在Pinterest上有約75萬粉絲，他分享的圖片主題涵蓋藝術、食譜及旅行願望清單。但在Pinterest成爲世界最具價值的科技初創公司之一時，他並沒有爲這一悄悄臨近的人生階段設置一塊“億萬富翁”願望剪貼板。
Sitting in a small meeting room below a poster that reads “Say the hard thing”, he hesitates. “I want to buy a new camera but I haven’t gotten around to it,” he says. “I really love photography . . . I can’t think of anything that’s journalist-worthy or exciting.”
坐在一間掛有“說出困難”標語的小會議室裏，他顯得有些猶豫。“我想買一臺新相機，但還沒決定好，”他說，“我真的很喜歡攝影……我想不出任何其他值得報道或令人興奮的事情。”
He is not part of the tech scene in San Francisco, but the “guys with young kids scene” — worlds he insists do not overlap. His Pinterest boards map his path to becoming “super grown up”. That journey went from stints as a consultant and at Google, to founding the start-up six years ago, to fathering two young children. His pinned pictures include sleek, wooden designer chairs for his first apartment without roommates, bouquets for his wedding and gifts for his children.
他不是典型的舊金山科技人士，而是那種“有童心的男人”——他堅稱這兩個世界沒有重疊。他的Pinterest剪貼板描繪出他成爲“超級成年人”的成長曆程——從擔任諮詢顧問、任職谷歌(Google)，到六年前創建Pinterest，再到成爲兩個孩子的父親。他在Pinterest上分享的圖片包括爲自己首個沒有室友的公寓添加的造型優美的木製設計師座椅、自己婚禮上的花束以及給孩子們的禮物。
Pinterest’s $11bn valuation, despite being only a year into generating revenue, is the result of it being unashamedly ke with some other Silicon Valley “unicorns”, or highly valued private start-ups, few have questioned whether a platform filled with devoted planners of decorating, camping weekends and celebratory meals would make money. Advertisers clamoured to get on the app before it even began to sell adverts.
雖然實現創收才一年時間，但Pinterest毅然決然的商業化已使公司估值達到110億美元。Pinterest平臺聚集了大量全情投入地策劃設計室內裝飾、週末野營及慶祝宴會的人，很少有人質疑這樣一個平臺是否能夠賺錢，這與硅谷其他一些“獨角獸”公司或者高估值的私人初創公司的境遇不同。甚至在Pinterest開始賣廣告之前，廣告商已爭着在這款應用上做廣告。
But for Mr Silbermann, Pinterest is more than a fancy, interactive shopping list. He is modest enough not to proselytise about an innovation revolution and jet off to see world leaders, unlike some tech entrepreneurs. But he does say Pinterest is changing the world by encouraging people to improve their lives, one everyday activity at a time.
但對西爾伯曼而言，Pinterest不僅僅是一個別出心裁的互動式購物清單。他非常謙遜，並不希望像某些科技企業家那樣引領一場創新革命，或者搭乘噴氣式飛機去會見各種世界級領導人。但他確實表示，Pinterest正在通過鼓勵人們改善自己的生活（每次改善一項日常活動）來改變世界。
“What would make me really happy five years from now was if [Pinterest] was really this global place where you could access the whole world’s ideas and they were just brought to you, totally personalised to you, every single day.”
“如果五年後Pinterest能真正成爲一個全球聚集地，在這裏，你每天都可以接觸到全世界的各種創意，它們全都呈現在你眼前，完全爲你個人定製，那麼我會真正感到高興。”
Pinterest was founded in 2010 by Mr Silbermann, Evan Sharp, chief creative officer, and Paul Sciarra, who left in 2010. Despite its male founders being keen to create a space for online collections, based on their geeky passions from bugs to design, it gained an early reputation as a social network for women shoppers, and above all else, a wedding emporium, stemming from its first nexus of committed users in Mr Silbermann’s native Midwest. But now about a third of US internet users have Pinterest accounts, according to the Pew Research Center, and it has a small but growing male audience encouraged to follow topics such as “man cave” and “survival skills”.
2010年，西爾伯曼與首席創意官埃文•夏普(Evan Sharp)以及保羅•夏拉(Paul Sciarra)共同創立了Pinterest。夏拉後於同年離開。雖然Pinterest的男性創始人對從安全漏洞到設計的東西抱有狂熱激情，由此希望創建一個在線分類收藏空間，但該網站從一開始就作爲女性購物者社交網絡而聞名，尤其是，它簡直是婚禮採購大全，這主要得益於來自西爾伯曼美國中西部家鄉的第一批忠實用戶。但如今，根據皮尤研究中心(Pew Research Center)的數據，約三分之一的美國互聯網用戶擁有Pinterest賬號，而且越來越多的Pinterest男性用戶（雖然目前較少）被鼓勵關注“男人的私人空間”、“生存技能”等話題。
Pinterest’s next project is going global.
Pinterest的下一步計劃是走向全球。
About 45 per cent of its users are outside the US and it has offices in the UK, France, Germany and Brazil. This shift can be seen at the Pinterest headquarters in SoMa, San Francisco’s start-up centre. The large former warehouse is, like the app, a temple to clean, white lines, with sunlight pouring through a swimming pool-sized skylight on to a central communal dining room. Like the pins on Pinterest, the office displays projects made by staff. On a previous visit, a wooden swing built by the legal team hung from the ceiling; this time, a board displays the flags of its five target countries in Lego.
Pinterest約45%的用戶在美國以外地區，公司在英國、法國、德國及巴西設有辦事處。這種轉變可以在Pinterest位於舊金山創業中心SoMa的總部看出。由大型倉庫改建的辦公室與Pinterest應用一樣，是一座簡潔、純白的“聖殿”，陽光從游泳池般大小的天窗照射進來，播灑在中央公共餐廳裏。像在Pinterest上分享圖片一樣，辦公室裏展示着員工做過的項目。上次參觀時，一個由法律團隊做的木鞦韆從天花板上垂下來；這次我看到的是一塊麪板，上面展示的是用樂高積木搭成的五個目標國家的國旗。
Many social platforms do not target countries, because adoption soars naturally when users recruit their friends to chat. But Pinterest needs to make a concerted effort country by country because people come for content, not conversation. Users want pins in the right language, with projects suitable for the local climate or cuisine and shops they can buy from — and so Pinterest must encourage content providers on to the platform first.
很多社交平臺並不以國家爲目標，因爲當用戶拉來朋友聊天時，註冊量自然會飆升。但Pinterest需逐個國家地做出協調努力，因爲人們登錄Pinterest爲的是內容，而不是爲了聊天。用戶希望用地道的語言分享圖片，話題應適合當地氣候或美食以及他們購物的商店——因此，Pinterest必須首先鼓勵內容提供者登錄其平臺。
Pinterest has 10 researchers who travel the world trying to understand how people might use the site. Mr Silbermann will embark on a global tour in June, saying he loves to learn about brand “mainstays” in other countries, such as the UK retailer John Lewis.
Pinterest有10名研究人員，他們環遊世界，設法瞭解人們或將如何使用其網站。西爾伯曼將於6月開始一次環球旅行，他表示，自己喜歡瞭解其他國家的“支柱”品牌，如英國零售商John Lewis。
Pinterest rejects the social network tag, preferring to compare itself to Google: a place where people look for things, not people. “I don’t think the comparison is meant to be in size but rather in the spirit of building a tool that everyone can use to help make their life better,” he says. “Google, I think of as really about retrieving information. Pinterest is really about almost pushing you ideas that you’ve never seen before.”
Pinterest拒絕被貼上社交網絡的標籤，更喜歡將自己比作谷歌——一個人們找東西、而非找人的地方。“我不是說要在規模上與谷歌進行比較，而是我們都本着打造一款工具的精神，讓每個人都可以用它幫助自己改善生活，”他說，“我認爲谷歌真正做的是檢索信息。Pinterest真正做的是激發你從未有過的靈感。”
“Whether it is television or a social network, [advertisers] feel that their ads have to pull people’s attention away because people aren’t there to talk about new ideas,” he says.
“無論是電視還是社交網絡，（廣告商）認爲他們的廣告必須把人們的注意力吸引到別的地方，因爲人們不會在那裏討論新創意，”他說。
The start-up will need to seduce marketers on a larger scale to grow into its valuation. Only 10 minutes’ walk away, Twitter provides a warning of what Pinterest could become if user growth fails to live up to high expectations; its shares are down by two-thirds in the past year. Mr Silbermann takes comfort in the fact Pinterest has followed the latest Silicon Valley trend: to stay private for longer. This means he can focus on improving performance, rather than on how he communicates about expectations.
Pinterest需要吸引大量營銷人員，以便讓公司規模追上估值。距離Pinterest走路僅10分鐘的Twitter提供了一項警示，即如果用戶增長達不到高期望值，Pinterest會變成什麼樣子；過去一年，Twitter的股價下降了三分之二。讓西爾伯曼感到欣慰的是，Pinterest跟上了硅谷的最新潮流：在更長時期內保持私有。這意味着他可以專注提升業績，而不是如何就市場的期望進行溝通。
The venture capital Pinterest has raised — a total of $1.3bn from investors including fund manager Fidelity, Japanese retailer Rakuten and Silicon Valley VC SV Angel— has enabled him to hire smart people that can make products, he says, such as those improving search and computer vision, a way of understanding image data.
他說，Pinterest籌得的風險資本——從包括富達基金(Fidelity)、日本零售商樂天(Rakuten)和硅谷風投公司SV Angel在內的投資者總計獲得13億美元——使他能夠聘請做得出產品的英才，比如那些能夠改善搜索和計算機視覺（一種看懂圖像數據的方式）的人才。
Neither he nor Mr Sharp, who went to architecture school, are software engineers and unlike many technology companies, Pinterest does not prioritise engineering above all else. If Mr Silbermann evangelises about anything, it is knitting — and not the woolly kind. “One of the values of the company is ‘knitting’ and the premise of it is that if you bring really diverse disciplines together, you can produce something better.” Pinterest employs a star engineer who wanted to be a cartoonist, a “world class” design team and former journalists.
他與建築學院畢業的夏普都不是軟件工程師，而且與許多科技公司不同的是，Pinterest沒有將工程師放在高於一切的位置。如果西爾伯曼有什麼祕籍的話，就是編織——當然不是織毛衣。“公司的價值觀之一是‘編織’，前提是，如果你將真正不同的學科融合在一起，你就能夠創造出更好的東西。”Pinterest聘請了一名希望成爲漫畫家的明星工程師，一個“世界級”設計團隊以及多名前記者。
This week, the company, including the nascent international teams, will gather in San Francisco for the annual “KnitCon”. Last year, employees gave classes on wine-tasting, writing screenplays and amateur locksmithery.
不久前，公司員工（包括新組建的國際團隊）齊聚在舊金山參加一年一度的“編織會議”(KnitCon)。去年，員工們擔任老師，教大家品酒、寫電影劇本和當業餘鎖匠。
Mr Silbermann’s eyes light up as he talks about the event, excited to be at the back of the class learning, rather than in the uncomfortable position of preaching to the company from the front. “I don’t know, I feel like I talk to the company too much,” he says.
談到這件事時，西爾伯曼眼前一亮。坐在教室後面學習讓他興奮，而在員工面前講話則讓他感到不舒服。“我不知道，我覺得我對公司員工講得太多了，”他說。
