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South Korea's internet giant
韓國(guó)互聯(lián)網(wǎng)巨頭
Now or Naver
機(jī)不可失
At home, South Korea's biggest web portal has thrashed Yahoo and kept Google at bay.
在國(guó)內(nèi)市場(chǎng)，韓國(guó)最大的門(mén)戶網(wǎng)站Naver已經(jīng)擊敗了雅虎和谷歌。
Now its owner plans to conquer the world with its messaging service
而現(xiàn)在，這間公司的老板正準(zhǔn)備以手中的即時(shí)通訊軟件去征服世界
Cutesy characters cost extra
可愛(ài)的卡通人物則需要額外收費(fèi)
DOWN jackets are typically stuffed with duck, not chicken, feathers. Why? Ask Naver.
羽絨服里通常以鴨絨作為原料，那為什么不用雞的羽毛呢？去問(wèn)Naver就行。
So ran an ad in 2003 for a South Korean web portal of that name featuring an innovative, crowdsourced question-and-answer service.
而這正是2003年韓國(guó)門(mén)戶網(wǎng)站Naver所打出的廣告，并且，這廣告是以一項(xiàng)革新的聚眾問(wèn)答服務(wù)為特點(diǎn)來(lái)推廣自己。
In spite of such features, Naver's chances looked slim as it was launched into a crowded market dominated by Yahoo of America and Daum, another South Korean company.
盡管有著自己的一些特色，但在一個(gè)早已被美國(guó)的雅虎和另一間韓國(guó)公司Daum所壟斷了的市場(chǎng)里，Naver似乎沒(méi)有什么商機(jī)。
Last year Naver indexed its 100-millionth question: a user asking for the title of a particular song, that begins with a giggle.
去年，Naver錄得它的第1億個(gè)提問(wèn)：一位用戶在詢問(wèn)一首以傻笑開(kāi)頭的歌。
An answer took just 14 minutes to arrive: Blow, by Kesha, an American singer.
僅僅14分鐘，他便得到了答案：一位美國(guó)歌手Kesha所唱的歌曲Blow。
Every day around 18m people visit its homepage.
每天大約有1千8百萬(wàn)人瀏覽它的主頁(yè)。
It has almost 80% of the South Korean search market, making the country one of just three where Google is not top.
在國(guó)內(nèi)搜索市場(chǎng)中，Naver擁有約80%的使用量，而這讓韓國(guó)成為了谷歌公司無(wú)法稱(chēng)霸的三個(gè)國(guó)家之一。
Google accounts for just 4% of searches; Yahoo, now trailing behind as the tenth most-visited portal, stopped producing specialist content for the South Korean market in 2012.
在韓國(guó)，谷歌僅占有4%的搜索使用量；目前已經(jīng)在常用門(mén)戶網(wǎng)站排行中落到了第十位置的雅虎，在2012年便停止了為韓國(guó)市場(chǎng)提供專(zhuān)門(mén)的欄目。
When Naver was set up, there were not many web pages written in Korean.
Naver創(chuàng)立之時(shí)，韓國(guó)還沒(méi)有太多網(wǎng)站。
So the Q&A service was a masterstroke—the users who answered others' questions provided lots of free content.
所以這套問(wèn)答服務(wù)推出是一個(gè)非常絕妙的舉動(dòng)—用戶們可以在這兒提問(wèn)并得到免費(fèi)的回答。
Naver handed out grades, from commoner to superman, to encourage them to keep writing.
Naver還給用戶們進(jìn)行了從平民到超人的評(píng)級(jí)，以鼓勵(lì)他們的持續(xù)貢獻(xiàn)。
Everyone wanted to be God in cyberspace, says Lim Wonki, the author of The Secret of Naver's Success, published in 2007.
2007年出版的《Naver的成功秘訣》作者Lim Wonki曾表示：每個(gè)人都想做虛擬世界的上帝。
Some Western web portals are suffering declining ad revenues, but Naver's are still rising.
部分西方門(mén)戶網(wǎng)站正處于廣告收益下滑的處境當(dāng)中，但Naver卻仍在增長(zhǎng)。
Jay Park of Samsung Securities, a stockbroker, says the portal's online-advertising sales, which provide three-quarters of Naver's revenues, grew by 7.7% last year.
三星證券股票經(jīng)紀(jì)杰?帕克說(shuō)，去年占該網(wǎng)站總收入四分之三的在線廣告業(yè)務(wù)收入增長(zhǎng)了7.7%。
He expects it to keep growing at this sort of rate.
他期望該網(wǎng)站能保持這樣的增長(zhǎng)比率。
As the money rolls in, it no longer has to rely on free material from users, and can buy up lots of exclusive content, from encyclopedias to videos, which it blocks rival search engines from accessing.
隨著現(xiàn)金的增加，Naver不再需要去以來(lái)用戶們的免費(fèi)資源，從而可以收購(gòu)從百科到視頻各種類(lèi)別的專(zhuān)屬項(xiàng)目，接著便可以屏蔽其競(jìng)爭(zhēng)對(duì)手的搜索引擎。
Unsurprisingly, this annoys them.
不出所料地，這一行為引起了其競(jìng)爭(zhēng)對(duì)手們憤慨。
In 2012 Kim In-sung, who built up Empas, a search engine, published a critical book, Naver's Two Faces.
2012年，Empas搜索引擎創(chuàng)始人金賢成出版了1本名為《Naver的兩副面孔》的書(shū)來(lái)抨擊Naver。
He says it is heaven for users but a black hole for content providers.
他表示，雖然對(duì)用戶們來(lái)說(shuō)是天堂，但對(duì)于內(nèi)容提供者來(lái)說(shuō)則是黑洞。
News organisations grumble that Naver pays them a pittance for licensing their stories.
多家新聞組織抱怨Naver僅給予他們微薄的報(bào)酬便使用了他們的報(bào)道。
Naver started out as an in-house venture by the IT division of Samsung, the country's largest industrial conglomerate.
最初，Naver是作為韓國(guó)最大的企業(yè)聯(lián)合集團(tuán)三星IT部門(mén)中的一個(gè)內(nèi)部分支。
But Samsung had sold the last of its shares in the company by 2004 and Naver is now the sixth-largest of the companies in the local KOSPI share index.
但三星早已在2004年以前就將全部Naver的股權(quán)賣(mài)出，與此同時(shí)Naver已經(jīng)是韓國(guó)本地股市KOSPI中規(guī)模排行第六的公司。
Mr Kim says it has begun to exhibit some of the least attractive traits of the chaebol, in particular by buying up smaller potential rivals and by using its market power to stop other portals getting access to content.
金先生說(shuō)目前Naver已經(jīng)開(kāi)始展現(xiàn)出了一些財(cái)閥特有的且不受人歡迎的行為，尤其是在收購(gòu)小型潛在對(duì)手以及利用自身的市場(chǎng)力量去妨礙其他門(mén)戶網(wǎng)站取得資訊方面表現(xiàn)得極為明顯。
In 2013 the country's Fair Trade Commission threatened the firm with a big fine, for allegedly unfair business practices.
2013年，國(guó)家公平交易委員會(huì)因而警告該公司，聲稱(chēng)他們將會(huì)對(duì)不公平交易行為開(kāi)出巨額罰單。
Naver persuaded it to drop this in return for it spending 100 billion won on helping smaller internet firms and on educating consumers about their rights.
為了平復(fù)此事，最終Naver拿出1000億韓元來(lái)進(jìn)行對(duì)小型互聯(lián)網(wǎng)公司的贊助，以及對(duì)消費(fèi)者權(quán)益進(jìn)行推廣，從而說(shuō)服了委員會(huì)取消罰款計(jì)劃。
Naver responds to all this by arguing that users still have a choice of portals:
Naver對(duì)以上種種指控，則回應(yīng)用戶依然能夠選擇自己要使用的門(mén)戶：
when a nude video of a Korean singer went online last November, visits to Google spiked because Naver had blocked it.
去年十一月，當(dāng)一個(gè)韓國(guó)歌手的裸體視頻被發(fā)到網(wǎng)上，由于Naver屏蔽了該視頻，谷歌的瀏覽量隨之急劇攀升。
Naver also says it is itself suffering unfair conditions in the mobile market, because 90% of South Korean smartphones run on Google's Android operating system, which offers Google as the default search engine.
與此同時(shí)，Naver還聲稱(chēng)在移動(dòng)終端市場(chǎng)里，自己才是遭受到不平等競(jìng)爭(zhēng)的一方：韓國(guó)90%的智能手機(jī)使用的都是由谷歌公司開(kāi)發(fā)的安卓系統(tǒng)，這意味著谷歌能夠以默認(rèn)搜索引擎這一方式來(lái)攻占移動(dòng)搜索市場(chǎng)。
Despite this, Google has only 15% of the mobile search market.
但盡管如此，谷歌現(xiàn)在僅占有15%的移動(dòng)搜索市場(chǎng)份額。
Go abroad, go mobile
走向國(guó)際，走向移動(dòng)
A bigger threat is KakaoTalk, a mobile platform and messaging app that, like Naver, offers games, e-books, photo storage and other services, launched in 2010 by a founder of Naver who left the firm. South Koreans now spend more time on it than they do on Naver.
還有個(gè)更大的威脅是來(lái)自一款移動(dòng)平臺(tái)和即時(shí)通訊軟件KakaoTalk。就像Naver一樣，KakaoTalk也提供了游戲、電子閱讀、照片儲(chǔ)存以及一些其他服務(wù)。這是一款由Naver其中一位創(chuàng)始人離職后在2010年所推出的產(chǎn)品。目前，韓國(guó)人在KakaoTalk的使用時(shí)長(zhǎng)上，已經(jīng)壓倒了Naver。
KakaoTalk's domestic success spurred Naver to go abroad and go mobile.
KakaoTalk在國(guó)內(nèi)市場(chǎng)的成功，促使著Naver要走向國(guó)際，以及走向移動(dòng)。
When a tsunami hit Japan in 2011, Naver's employees there huddled at the office and, in one-and-a-half months, created Line, a free mobile messaging and call service that is now being promoted as the Facebook of Asia.
2011年日本受到海嘯襲擊之時(shí)，Naver的員工們?cè)谵k公室里齊心協(xié)力，前后花了一個(gè)半月的時(shí)間最終開(kāi)發(fā)出了一款免費(fèi)移動(dòng)通信軟件，也就是如今被人推為亞洲Facebook的Line。
Within 18 months it hit the 100m-user mark, which took Facebook and Twitter around four years; in November 2013 it surpassed 300m downloads, making it a serious rival for WhatsApp, an American messaging service Facebook is paying $19 billion for.
Facebook與Twitter花了四年時(shí)間才累積到了100萬(wàn)名用戶，而Line在18個(gè)月內(nèi)就完成了這項(xiàng)指標(biāo)；在2013年11月里，Line獲得了超過(guò)300萬(wàn)次的下載，而這則令其成為了WhatsApp的強(qiáng)勁對(duì)手。
If, as Mr Park predicts, Naver owes half of its revenue to Line in five years, it will have become one of Korea's few global players among internet firms.
正如帕克先生所預(yù)言的，如果Naver能在五年內(nèi)令Line的收入攀升至集團(tuán)總收入的一半，那么它將成為少數(shù)能在國(guó)際市場(chǎng)上分一杯羹的韓國(guó)互聯(lián)網(wǎng)公司。
However, Naver's shares fell sharply on February 20th, after Facebook announced its takeover of WhatsApp—on the assumption that the social network's backing would make WhatsApp impossible to beat.
然而在Facebook宣布了其對(duì)WhatsApp的并購(gòu)之后，2月20日當(dāng)天Naver的股價(jià)嚴(yán)重下挫。
Naver's shares recovered this week on rumours, which it denied, that a big Japanese tech firm, Softbank, was offering to buy a stake in Line.
這正是基于外界的猜測(cè)：有了社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)的支持后，WhatsApp將成為一個(gè)無(wú)法擊敗巨人。由于傳聞稱(chēng)日本科技巨頭軟銀將入股Line，本周Naver的股價(jià)有所回升，但Naver方面否認(rèn)了這一消息。
Naver's early attempts to get into big foreign markets went badly.
Naver早前拓展海外市場(chǎng)的嘗試均以失敗告終。
Plans aired in 2009 for a Naver California and a Naver Korean-American never took off.
2009年，公司計(jì)劃的兩個(gè)項(xiàng)目Naver之攻陷加州和Naver之美韓聯(lián)合從未得到執(zhí)行。
Another big rival to Line, WeChat, is the most popular messaging app in China and, like KakaoTalk, is backed by Tencent, Asia's biggest internet firm.
Line的另一位強(qiáng)勁對(duì)手則是微信，這款軟件與KakaoTalk一樣有著全亞洲最大的互聯(lián)網(wǎng)公司—騰訊的支持，而且目前微信早已成為了中國(guó)市場(chǎng)中最熱門(mén)的即時(shí)通訊軟件。
So Naver is concentrating on two smaller countries where Line already has a foothold, Thailand and Taiwan, and on places where smartphone use is low but set to boom, such as India and Mexico.
因此Naver在重心轉(zhuǎn)移到了自己先前進(jìn)行市場(chǎng)開(kāi)發(fā)過(guò)的兩個(gè)較小的國(guó)家和地區(qū)—泰國(guó)和臺(tái)灣，以及一些智能手機(jī)普及率低但即將有爆炸性增長(zhǎng)的國(guó)家和地區(qū)如印度和墨西哥。
In the past year it has spent around 250 billion won on marketing its messaging app in these and other countries.
過(guò)去幾年中，Naver已經(jīng)在上述的和其他的一些國(guó)家地區(qū)花費(fèi)了約2500億韓元來(lái)推廣自己的即時(shí)通訊軟件。
But Naver's real strength abroad, says Mr Park, is its decade of experience in the portal business, doing everything from games to shopping to online newspapers.
但帕克先生表示，在海外市場(chǎng)中，Naver真正的優(yōu)勢(shì)在于其長(zhǎng)年累月的門(mén)戶網(wǎng)站業(yè)務(wù)經(jīng)驗(yàn)—他的無(wú)所不能包含了從游戲到網(wǎng)絡(luò)購(gòu)物到線上報(bào)紙新聞的所有服務(wù)。
Line can do all these too, whereas WhatsApp is, until Facebook gets its hands on it, mainly a messaging service.
Line也能夠做到上述一切。相比之下，在Facebook接管之前WhatsApp僅僅只是一個(gè)即時(shí)通訊應(yīng)用。
Facebook still relies heavily on advertising, but Line makes 70% of its money from games and electronic stickers—oversize and elaborate emoticons, with names such as Cony the Rabbit and Brown the Bear, which users can insert into picture messages.
現(xiàn)在Facebook的收入仍十分依賴于廣告業(yè)務(wù)，但Line已經(jīng)從游戲和電子貼圖業(yè)務(wù)中賺取了70%的利潤(rùn)。該軟件的電子貼圖是特大號(hào)的精美表情符號(hào)，且不同的表情符號(hào)有各自的人物和名字，例如可妮兔和布朗熊。用戶可以通過(guò)圖片信息的方式發(fā)送電子貼圖。
Coca-Cola and Barcelona football club have paid Line to design special stickers for them.
可口可樂(lè)公司與巴薩足球俱樂(lè)部已經(jīng)向Line公司付款并要求其制作專(zhuān)屬自己的貼圖。
It is unclear if smartphone users in Europe and America will warm to such cutesy characters, but Naver hopes to draw those wary of Facebook's open network to Line Band, a closed social-networking service.
目前還無(wú)法確定歐美的智能手機(jī)用戶們是否會(huì)接受如此可愛(ài)的卡通人物，但Naver方面希望能將對(duì)Facebook的開(kāi)放性心存疑慮的使用者吸引過(guò)來(lái)，讓他們到自己旗下更具私密性的社交網(wǎng)絡(luò)平臺(tái)Line Band上互動(dòng)。
Though Mr Park expects Line's valuation to converge with that of Facebook in the long term, for now it is tiny by comparison—about 9% the size.
雖然帕克先生期望Line的估值能從長(zhǎng)遠(yuǎn)角度看追上Facebook，但兩者對(duì)比起來(lái)Line的規(guī)模還是非常小-大約是后者的9%。
Nevertheless, in 2010 Naver's founder, Lee Hae-jin, chided employees for slacking and reminded them of their company's master plan: a first decade struggling; a second decade, marching to number one.
盡管如此，Naver的創(chuàng)始人李海珍在2010年鞭策著員工們，提醒著他們公司有著宏大的目標(biāo)：頭十年里努力奮斗；在第二個(gè)十年內(nèi)，走向世界之巔。
