好英语网多家硅谷公司股价暴跌
SAN FRANCISCO — Another couple of days like this and the great tech bubble of 2012 might recede into history.
旧金山——这样的状况再持续几天，2012年的科技泡沫可能就要成为历史了。
Several companies that were supposed to be the foundation of a new Internet era plummeted this week as analysts and investors downgraded their dreams. There were instant echoes of the crash of 2000, when the money stopped flowing, the dot-coms crumbled and Silicon Valley devolved into recriminations and lawsuits.
本周，随着分析人士和投资者下调了预期，几家本来被认为是新互联网时代基石的公司遭遇了暴跌。人们立刻联想到了2000年科技泡沫的破灭。当时，资金停止流动，互联网公司崩溃，硅谷陷入了一片相互指责和诉讼之中。
Shares of Facebook stumbled to a new low Friday after its first earnings report revealed a murky path to any profit that would justify its lofty valuation. The heavily promoted $100 billion company on the eve of its May debut is now a $65 billion company and persistently headed south.
周五，Facebook的股价再创新低。其首份收益报表所显示的盈利途径不明确，无法与其高昂的估值相称。 在5月上市前夕，Facebook估值高达1000亿美元。如今，其估值仅为650亿美元，且一直保持下跌趋势。
Zynga, the social games company that uses Facebook as a platform, was battered even worse on Thursday, leaving its value at less than a quarter of its peak last winter. Netflix, which is trying to move from physical discs to streaming video, and the coupon company Groupon have also been under severe pressure, leaving them at a fraction of their recent worth.
周四，以Facebook为平台的社交游戏公司Zynga受到了更为严重的打击，其市值仅为去年冬天鼎盛时期的四分之一。正尝试从实物光盘业务抽身转战流媒体的网飞(Netflix)以及团购公司Groupon也都面临着严峻的压力，它们的市值仅剩下了不久前的一小部分。
Feelings of disillusionment are far from universal, and came even as The New York Times reported that Apple, the most successful tech company, had been discussing an investment in Twitter. Social media is flourishing; a billion Facebook and 500 million Twitter users would vouch for that. But as just about every Internet company is grappling with the transition to a mobile world, turning groups of people into cash-generating customers on a hand-held device is clearly an immense task.
破灭的感觉远非普遍存在，与此同时，《纽约时报》还报道称，苹果(Apple)这家最成功的科技企业正在商讨对Twitter的投资。社交媒体一片欣欣向荣，Facebook的10亿用户和Twitter的5亿用户会保证这一点。然而，就在所有的互联网公司竞相迎来移动时代的转型之际，在掌上设备上把人变成生钱的消费者，这显然是一项巨大的任务。
Nick Zaharias, an independent consultant who advises institutional investors, said his clients were “infinitely more skeptical.”
为机构投资人提供建议咨询服务的独立咨询师尼克·扎哈里亚斯(Nick Zaharias)表示，他的客户变得“越发不愿轻信”了。
“For future deals that are pitched as social deals,” he explained, “they’re not going to pay up. The multiples are going to be far, far lower.”
“那些作为社交媒体形式出现的未来交易，”他解释道，“都不会赚钱的。市盈率将会大大降低。”
The issues facing each tumbling company are slightly different. But they all have the problem of selling something — imaginary tractors, Internet films, discount deals or, in Facebook’s case, someone “liking” a product — that is not quite real and perhaps less than essential.
各股价下跌的公司面临的问题稍有不同，但他们都在销售上有问题，而他们要出售的——假想的拖拉机、网上电影、打折促销，或者像Facebook，它要出售的就是让人“喜欢”一种产品——这些东西都不怎么真实，而且可能也不那么必须。
“The gleam has come off the word ‘social,’ ” said Ben Schachter, an Internet analyst with the Macquarie Group. “The ground is now shifting underneath these companies’ feet at a speed that we didn’t see even in the late 1990s.”
“‘社交’这个词已经不那么光鲜夺目了，”麦格理集团(Macquarie Group)的互联网分析师本·沙克特(Ben Schachter)说道。“这些公司正在经历剧变，而变化的速度则是我们甚至在上世纪90年代都没有看到过的。”
Groupon and Netflix have been in the investor doghouse for a while, while with Facebook there seems simple regret that its grandest ambitions might not be reached (“The jury is in: Facebook is not and will not be a second Google,” the research group IDC said).
Groupon和网飞已经被投资者冷落了一段时间了。至于Facebook，似乎也很遗憾，不能实现当初的宏伟目标了。研究机构国际数据公司(International Data Corporation，简称IDC)表示，“结论出来了，Facebook现在不是，将来也不会成为第二个谷歌。”
With Zynga, however, there was a sudden sense that building a blue-chip business from virtual goods might be virtually impossible.
然而，在Zynga的案例里，人们突然感到，以虚拟商品起家打造一家蓝筹企业实际上或许是不可能的。
“Shocking,” Mr. Schachter wrote in his report after Zynga revealed in its earnings report on Wednesday that it might make less than half of what it had hoped to earn this year from its more obsessive players who pay actual money for virtual goods like tractors — its only real source of income. Increasingly, gamers want to play on the run, and Zynga’s mobile games are not a runaway success.
Zynga在周三发布了收益报告，称该公司今年的收益可能不及先前预期的一半。沙克特在他的报告中写道，“令人震惊。”该公司唯一的收入来源，就是那些铁杆游戏用户，情愿花真的钱买虚拟的拖拉机。但是玩家对移动设备上的游戏需求越来越高，而公司的移动游戏平台并不太成功。
For all the pain that stockholders of Zynga and the other companies must feel, it is not yet March 2000, when all tech stocks went into free fall. The old-line companies, including Google, Amazon and Apple, are doing fine.
尽管Zynga和其他公司的股东肯定会感受到痛楚，但现在还不是2000年3月。那时，所有科技股直线下跌。而现在，包括谷歌，亚马逊(Amazon)以及苹果在内的老牌公司还表现良好。
But the questions about whether the chief executives and other early investors in some once-hot companies might have been a little too eager to cash in are already beginning, just as they did 12 years ago.
但是，部分曾红极一时的公司的首席执行官以及早期投资者是否过分急于牟利，这样的问题已经开始了，正如12年前。
The downward slide in public valuations would have an effect on private valuations, venture capitalists said, but it would be manageable.
风险投资人表示，上市公司估值的下跌可能会影响到私人公司的估值，但这是可控的。
Some of the biggest venture capital firms have raised giant funds in recent months. New Enterprise Associates announced this week, for instance, that it raised $2.6 billion for its latest fund — the second largest in venture history. Valuations, particularly those at the later stage, have tightened a bit, but plenty of younger start-ups are still raising seed capital at lofty valuations.
在最近几个月里，一些大型风险投资公司已经筹集到了大量资金。比如，恩颐投资 (New Enterprise Associates) 本周宣布其在最近一轮融资中筹集到了26亿美元。这是风险投资历史上规模第二大的一笔融资。各公司的估值，尤其是那些进入后期的估值，已有所收紧，但大量年轻的新兴公司依然在以极高的估值募集原始资本。
“Venture capitalists tend to think long term,” said Peter Barris, NEA managing general partner. “The daily ups and downs in the stock market you’ve got to take with a grain of salt when you’re looking at new investments and what they might be worth years from now.”
“风险投资人往往想得比较长远，”恩颐投资的执行合伙人彼得·巴里斯(Peter Barris)说。“对待新的投资和它们将来的回报，眼下的涨跌不能太当真。”
One blessing and one problem with investing in tech companies is that the pace of their development has increased. A start-up’s initial sprint can be exciting, but it can also make it difficult to pinpoint when growth will start to decelerate. “Companies can grow into their markets faster than ever before but that means they can reach saturation faster than ever before,” said Roelof Botha, a partner at Sequoia Capital.
科技公司的发展速度已经提升了，这对投资科技公司而言，是件好事，但同时也是个问题。新兴公司的初期冲刺令人兴奋，但也可能让人无法准确判断增速何时放缓。“公司能以前所未有的速度占领市场，但那也意味着它们能以前所未有的速度达到饱和，”红杉资本(Sequoia Capital)的合伙人鲁罗夫·博塔(Roelof Botha)说道。
Two years ago, Sequoia was approached by secondary market shareholders who wanted to sell Facebook shares at a $25 billion valuation. Sequoia declined because it doesn’t like being a passive shareholder and “we asked ourselves if we could generate a really healthy return for our investors and we couldn’t find the conviction,” Mr. Botha said. One concern was the slowdown of Facebook user growth in developed markets. That worry resurfaced again this week.
两年前，二级市场的持股人找到红杉，想以250亿美元的估值出售Facebook的股票。红杉拒绝了，因为它不喜欢做一名被动持股人，而且“我们问自己，是否能真正为投资者带来稳健的回报，我们无法肯定，”博塔说道。其中的一个担忧是Facebook在成熟市场的用户增长放缓。本周，这一担忧再次浮浮现。
In what has become a common refrain, many venture capitalists say Silicon Valley is rich with investment opportunities, because the world of 2012 is vastly different from the dot-com era. As the argument goes, it has never been easier to create a global start-up out of the box. The number of people connected to the Web is unprecedented. And so on.
很多风险投资人说硅谷充满了投资机会，因为2012年的世界同网络泡沫时代大为不同。这种言论已经变得很常见。这种观点认为，异想天开创立一家全球新兴企业从来没有像今天这么容易过，互联网用户人数也达到了空前的水平。等等……
In other words, the bubble will not pop, because this time it is different.
换句话说，泡沫不会破灭，因为这次不一样了。
In an e-mail sent to founders last month, Paul Graham, the co-founder of Y Combinator, an influential start-up incubator, warned of possible headwinds. But Friday he said in effect not to worry — at least not yet.
上个月，在发给公司创始人的一封邮件中，颇具影响的创业孵化器Y Combinator的共同创始人保罗·格雷厄姆(Paul Graham)警告说，要注意可能的逆风。但在周五，他又说不用担心——至少现在还不用。
“It’s too early to notice any effect on valuations,” Mr. Graham said. “Personally though, I have a lot of confidence in Facebook. I expect this is just a random fluctuation.”
“现在要看到对估值的影响，还为时尚早，” 格雷厄姆说。“不过就个人而言，我对Facebook非常有信心。我认为这只是随机的波动而已。”