2015考研英语阅读又一轮的数字淘金热

　　Another digital gold rush

　　又一轮的数字淘金热

　　Internet companies are booming again. Does thatmean it is time to buy or to sell?

　　互联网公司再次勃兴。这是否意味着买入或者卖出正逢时?

　　PIER 38 is a vast, hangar-like structure, perched on San Franciscos waterfront. Once a placewhere Chinese immigrants landed with picks and shovels, ready to build railways duringCalifornias Gold Rush, the pier is now home to a host of entrepreneurs with smartphones andcomputers engaged in a race for internet riches. From their open-plan offices, the youngpeople running start-ups with fashionably odd names such as NoiseToys, Adility and Trazzlercan gaze at the fancy yachts moored nearby when they arent furiously tapping out lines ofcode.

　　38号坞棚是坐落在旧金山滨海的一幢巨大棚库状结构的建筑。在加利福尼亚淘金潮时期，这里曾是准备修建铁路的中国移入民带着铁锹铁铲的登陆地，而这些坞棚如今则是一群带着智能电话和电脑埋头于互联网财富竞赛的实业家们的老巢，这些年轻人运营着有着像NoiseToys， Adility 和Trazzler这样名字新潮而古怪的新兴企业，在他们激情四溢的打出一行行的代码之外的时间里，可以凝望到停泊在附近的豪华游艇。

　　The speed of innovation is unlike anything weve seen before, says Ryan Spoon, who runs Dogpatch Labs, an arm of a venture-capital firm that rents space to young companies at Pier 38. Like many other entrepreneurs, the tenants would love to follow firms such as Facebook and Zynga, a maker of hugely popular online games including Farmville, that have been thrust into the internet limelight in the space of a few short years.

　　创新的速度与我们先前的所见迥然不同，在38号坞棚运行着一家风险资本公司分支，向年轻公司出租空间的 Dogpatch Labs 的Ryan Spoon说。和其他许多企业一样，这些天才乐意于追从像脸书和Zynga这样的公司。 Zynga公司是一个包括Farmvile游戏在内的极为风行的在线游戏制造商，它在短短的数年之间里，已经冲进了互联网的聚光灯之下。

　　Some of the most prominent start-ups are preparing for stockmarket listings or are being bought by big firms with deep pockets. On May 9th LinkedIn, a social network for professionals that took in revenue of $243m last year, set the terms of its imminent initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange , which value it at up to $3.3 billion. The next day Microsoft said it was buying Skype, an internet calling and video service, for $8.5 billion .

　　某些最为卓越的新兴企业都在准备上市，或是被大型公司以丰厚的价格收购。在5月9日，面向专业人员的，去年收入达$2.43亿美元的社交网络LinkedIn，为其即将在纽约股票交易所首次公开募股)作出了规划，其估值将高达$33亿美元。而就在次日，微软说将以$85亿美元收购电话和视频服务互联网公司Skype。

　　Other firms such as Groupon, which provides online coupons to its subscribers, are likely to go public soon. The return of big internet IPOs, rarities since a bubble in telecoms and internet stocks burst in 2000, and the resurgence of large mergers and acquisitions among technology firms is dividing opinion in the industry. Some veterans see a new bubble forming in the valuations of start-ups and a handful of more mature firms such as Twitter, which is still hunting for a satisfactory business model five years after the first tweet. More sanguine voices retort that many young companies have exciting prospects and that there are plenty of corporate buyers, such as Microsoft, with the money and confidence to snap up older internet firms still in private hands.

　　其他的，像 Groupon这样为其定购者提供在线优惠券的公司，很可能不久也会上市。这次大型互联网公司IPO的回归，在电讯行业和互联网行业股票泡沫在2000年破灭后尤显稀少;而在科技公司中再次出现的大量合并和收购是工业领域是分界线般的判定。有些老手就看到，在对新兴企业和少数像推特公司这样更为成熟的企业的估值上，新的泡沫的形成。在第一条tweet出现5年之后，推特公司仍在为满意的商业模式进行追索。更多的持乐观态度的的声音反驳说，许多年轻公司具有让人兴奋的预期，并且有相当多的像微软这样带着资金和自信的大型买家席卷那些仍在私人手中的较为年老的互联网公司。