Twitter should take inspiration from Asian social media groups that convince users to pay for services rather than relying on advertising, the company’s revenue chief told the Financial Times.
Twitter全球营收业务总裁亚当•贝恩(Adam Bain)对英国《金融时报》表示，该公司应从亚洲的社交媒体企业那里吸取灵感，说服用户为服务付费，而不是单纯依靠广告收入。
Adam Bain said Twitter and the rest of the US internet sector could learn from the revenue model that has emerged in Asia, where products such as chat apps are used as platforms to sell everything from stickers to in-app games.
贝恩指出，Twitter以及美国互联网行业的其他公司，应学习亚洲地区出现的营收模式；在亚洲，聊天应用等产品被用作电商平台，销售从贴纸到应用内购游戏等各种商品。
But he stopped short of suggesting that Twitter itself was planning on rolling out paid features on its platform.
但他并没有明确表示，Twitter自身正计划在其平台上推出付费功能。
“The model of why people pay for certain features, in Korea and Japan – there’s a really good example for the rest of us to learn,” he said. “The way they’ve got consumers to pay for features and services is interesting, and something everybody in our space could learn from.”
贝恩表示：“在韩国和日本，促使人们愿意为某些特色功能付费的业务模式，对于我们其他人来说是非常好的学习案例。他们吸引消费者为其特色功能及服务付费的方式很有意思，美国互联网行业的所有企业都能从中学到点什么。”
Twitter is expanding its advertising business outside the US. Although more than three-quarters of users are overseas, that segment only contributes about a quarter of the revenue.
Twitter正在美国以外的市场拓展广告业务。虽然该公司海外用户所占比例超过四分之三，但这部分用户仅为该公司带来了约四分之一的收入。
The nearly-eight-year-old company made the vast majority of its $665m in revenue last year from advertising, in the form of promoted tweets, accounts and trends, with a small contribution from selling Twitter data to partners. But it is reported to be working on incorporating e-commerce into the platform after hiring Nathan Hubbard, the former chief executive of Ticketmaster , to work for Mr Bain just before its initial public offering last autumn.
Twitter成立现已八年。去年该公司收入6.65亿美元，绝大部分来自广告业务，主要形式包括推广性质的tweet消息、账号以及热门话题，还有一小部分收入来自于向合作伙伴出售Twitter数据。Twitter在去年秋季首次公开募股(IPO)之前，聘请了Ticketmaster前首席执行官内森•哈伯德(Nathan Hubbard)在贝恩手下工作；有报道称，自那以来Twitter一直致力于将电子商务纳入其平台。
Mr Bain has been travelling to learn about how marketers use the platform – and its rivals – and opening regional offices.
贝恩近期一直在到处出差，一方面了解市场营销人员使用Twitter和其竞争对手的情况，另一方面在设立一些地区办公室。
While Twitter competes with Facebook for social media advertising spending across the world, in Asia it faces other rivals in the form of chat apps such as Tencent’s WeChat and the Japanese service Line. Snapchat, which Facebook tried to buy, according to two people familiar with the matter, has also said Tencent was a “role model” for the company.
虽然Twitter与Facebook在全世界争夺社交媒体广告业务，但在亚洲，Twitter还面临其他竞争对手，比如腾讯(Tencent)旗下的聊天应用微信(WeChat)、以及日本的聊天应用Line。据两位知情人士透露，Facebook曾试图收购的Snapchat也曾表示，腾讯是该公司的“学习榜样”。
Facebook’s $19bn acquisition of WhatsApp last month underlined the value of chat apps and the importance for US social networks of further penetrating global markets.
Facebook上月斥资190亿美元收购WhatsApp，凸显出了聊天应用的价值，以及进一步渗透全球市场对美国社交网络企业的重要性。
But Mr Bain said that even in Asia there was no service offering quite what Twitter did to advertisers. “Our view is that Twitter is live, public, conversational and distributed. The power of those things together no other platform is offering. There are things that are live but not public or conversational or distributed, or those that are public that aren’t live and conversational.”
但贝恩表示，即便是在亚洲，也几乎没有什么服务能与Twitter提供给广告商的服务相匹敌。“我们认为，Twitter是实时的、公开的、可对话的、以及可传播的。没有任何其他平台能够同时满足这些特质。有些产品是实时的，但不公开、不可对话或不可传播。有些产品是公开的，但却不实时、也不可对话。”
Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research, said there was no reason western consumers could not be convinced to pay for online services like those in Asia.
Pivotal Research的分析师布赖恩•威泽(Brian Wieser)表示，我们有理由认为，西方消费者能像亚洲消费者一样，被说服为网络服务付费。