新浪微博何时才能创收?

users must register with their real identities will probably delay the company's revenue-generating plan until the second half of this year.

从那以来，曹国伟已两次推迟了商业化时间表，预计本月他将再次这么做。新浪员工表示，政府要求所有微博用户必须登记真实身份，这很可能将公司的创收计划推迟至今年下半年。

"That will create a lot of negative sentiment with investors," says Alicia Yap, an analyst at Barclays Capital. "The post-New Year rally will not be sustainable."

“这将在投资者当中产生非常大的负面情绪，”巴克莱资本(Barclay Capital)分析师埃利西亚•雅普(Alicia Yap)表示。“新年后新浪股价的涨势将无法持续下去。”

Such concerns were reinforced this week, when government officials said that Weibo users who failed to register under their real names by March 16 would no longer be allowed to post messages. Local media have reported that only 3m new users have registered on Sina Weibo over the past month – down from about 20m in earlier months.

政府官员最近表示，从3月16日起，没有实名注册的用户将不准在微博上发言，这使投资者的担忧进一步加剧。中国媒体报道称，新浪微博过去一个月新增用户仅300万人，低于以往几个月大约新增2000万人的水平。

The company's share price already reflects some of these concerns. Following a series of government moves towards tighter censorship of social media, and falling profitability because of the soaring cost of marketing Weibo, Sina shares have lost 54 per cent since their peak of $142.83 on April 19 last year.

这些担忧已经在新浪的股价中得到了反映。继政府采取一系列措施收紧对社交媒体的审查，同时微博营销成本飙升导致盈利能力下降后，新浪股价已从去年4月19日142.83美元的高位下跌54%。

Sina has not been idle, though. "The company has been working hard to lay the ground for monetisation, and it is moving closer," says Dong Xu, a social media expert at Analysys International, an internet research company in Beijing. That includes hiring engineers to strengthen its skills in developing applications and to adjust its platform to new needs.

不过，新浪未曾懈怠。“新浪一直在努力为微博商业化打基础，现在离目标更近了，”北京互联网调研公司易观国际(Analysys International)的社交媒体专家董旭表示。新浪的努力包括招募工程技术人员来加强应用开发方面的技能，以及调整其平台以满足新的需求。

Unlike Tencent, China's largest internet company by revenues and Sina's main rival in the social space, Sina is essentially a media company. Advertising accounted for 77 per cent of its 2011 revenues of $484m, Morgan Stanley estimates.

与中国营收最高的互联网公司、新浪在社交媒体领域的主要对手腾讯(Tecent)有所不同，新浪在本质上是一家媒体公司。据摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)估计，新浪2011年营业收入为4.84亿美元，其中广告收入占到77%。

Investors hope the company can build a business beyond advertising, similar to Facebook, which last week filed for its long-awaited stock market debut to raise $5bn. Such a model would resemble Tencent, whose broad spread of revenue streams has made it much less vulnerable to cyclical swings when advertising falls.

投资者希望新浪把自己打造成一家类似于Facebook、不仅依赖广告的企业。上周，Facebook提交了期待已久的上市申请，打算融资50亿美元。这种模式将和腾讯很相似，腾讯拥有广泛的收入流，这意味着当广告收入下降时，该公司受到周期波动的影响要小得多。

Sina has taken steps to prepare for that, including the launch of a gaming platform and a virtual currency. But that is all at an experimental stage and there is scepticism about some areas of monetisation.

新浪已采取行动向这个方向努力，包括推出一个游戏平台和一种虚拟货币。但这些都处于试验阶段，而且外界对某些领域的商业化前景表示怀疑。

"So far, most things are free," says Xu Zhiming, founder of Kuaishubao, an online bookstore that uses Sina Weibo for its order management and customer relations.

在线书店快书包(Kuaishubao)的创始人徐智明表示，“大多数东西迄今都是免费的。”目前，快书包使用新浪微博进行订单管理和客户关系管理。

Sina has made its gaming platform free of charge for the first year. Even if it were to start charging, analysts' expectations are very low. This is partly because Sina's user base, which consists largely of white-collar workers in China's largest cities, "are not gamers", says Mr Dong of Analysys.

新浪的游戏平台第一年对用户免收费用。即便开始收费，分析师们的预期也很低。易观国际的董旭表示，部分原因在于，新浪的用户群以中国各大城市的白领为主，他们“不是游戏玩家”。

That would leave Sina with advertising. The two main areas of potential here would be the country's soaring e-commerce market and highly targeted ads similar to those on Facebook. Many Chinese e-commerce sites have already linked up to Weibo, but Sina has yet to demand a revenue share for that.

这使得新浪必须依赖广告。两个具有潜力的主要领域将是中国蒸蒸日上的电子商务市场，以及类似于Facebook的具有高度针对性的广告。许多国内电子商务网站都和新浪建立了链接，但新浪尚未提出收入分成要求。

The biggest disappointment for industry experts has been lack of progress in targeted ads.

最令行业专家失望的一点是，新浪在定向广告上进展甚微。

"In theory, Sina has an incredible asset with all this user data, but they don't appear to know how to analyse those data," says a Beijing advertising agent.

一家北京的广告代理商表示，“在理论上，所有这些用户数据都是新浪的宝贵资产，但他们好像不懂得如何分析这些数据。”

Despite healthy advertising demand in general, that weakness in reading the data impedes progress, especially in the current political climate. "Brands worry that they could be tied to re-tweeted messages that might be sensitive," says Barcap's Ms Yap.

尽管广告需求总体上保持稳健，但解读数据方面的弱点妨碍了新浪的发展，尤其是在当前的政治气候下。“各品牌担心，它们可能受到转发的敏感信息的牵连，”巴克莱资本的雅普表示。

All these things are much less of a problem for Tencent. Although it has a microblog of its own, the Shenzhen-based company sees the service mostly as a tool to wear down Sina and make sure it does not challenge Tencent's lead in social networking in China.

对腾讯而言，所有这些都不算什么问题。尽管腾讯也推出了自己的微博，但这家总部位于深圳的公司主要把微博服务视为拖住新浪的一种工具，确保新浪不会挑战自己在中国社交网站领域的领先地位。

Says a Tencent executive: "We have no plans to monetise our microblog. We don't need to."

一位腾讯高管表示：“我们还没有使微博商业化的计划。我们不需要这么做。”

译者:邢嵬