The internet’s next act

互联网的下一幕

　　You ain’t seen nothing yet

　　好戏在后头

　　The second half of humanity is joining the internet. They will change it, and it will change them

　　地球另一半人口正在接入互联网。他们会改变互联网，互联网也会改变他们

　　IN 2007 MORE humans lived in cities than outside them for the first time. It was a transition 5,000 years in the making. The internet has been quicker to reach the halfway mark. Over 50% of the planet’s population is now online, a mere quarter of a century after the web first took off among tech-savvy types in the West. The second half of the internet revolution has begun. It is changing how society works—and also creating a new business puzzle.

　　地球上住在城市里的人数在2007年首次超过了住在城市外的人数。这一转变历时五千年。互联网达到“过半”目标的速度要快得多。超过50%的地球人口现在都已联网，这距离网络在西方国家的科技发烧友中首先流行起来不过25年。互联网革命的后半段已经开始。它正在改变社会的运作方式，同时带来一个新的商业谜题。

　　Most new users are in the emerging world; some 726m people came online in the past three years alone. China is still growing fast. But much of the rise is coming from poorer places, notably India and Africa. Having seen what fake news and trolling has done to public discourse in rich countries, many observers worry about politics being debased, from the polarisation of India’s electorate to the persecution of Myanmar’s Rohingya minority. On the positive side, charities and aid workers talk endlessly and earnestly about how smartphones will allow farmers to check crop prices, let villagers sign up for online education and help doctors boost vaccination rates.

　　互联网的新用户大多来自新兴市场：仅过去三年里就有约7.26亿人接入网络。中国的互联网用户数仍在快速增长。但大部分增长来自更贫困的地区，尤其是印度和非洲。看到虚假新闻和煽动性言论对富裕国家公众舆论的影响后，许多观察人士担心政治风气正被败坏——从印度选民的两极分化，到缅甸对少数民族罗兴亚人的迫害。从积极的一面看，慈善机构和救援人员滔滔不绝、满腔热情地谈论着智能手机如何能让农民们查看农作物价格、让村民们报名接受在线教育，帮助医生提高疫苗接种率。

　　Less well appreciated is that the main attractions of being online are the same for the second half as they were for the first. Socialising and play, not work and self-improvement, are the draw. Porn is popular. Messaging apps help friends stay in touch, and let migrant workers say goodnight to their children back home. People entertain their friends—and strangers—on social media with goofy home-made videos on YouTube or TikTok, an app focused on short, humorous clips. Cheap data plans and thumb drives bring pirated films to millions who may never have been to a cinema. Dating apps are more popular than farming advice; video games are more popular than either. Such boons are unlikely to make their way into many un development reports. But they are a boost to the stock of human happiness.

　　不那么让人津津乐遁的一点是，吸引地球上其余一半人上网的主要原因和前一半人一样，不是为了工作或自我提高，而是为了社交和娱乐。色情内容很受欢迎。消息应用让朋友们保持联系，让在外地工作的人能向留在家里的孩子道晚安。人们在社交媒体上用YouTube或抖音(一款专注于搞笑短视频的应用)上自制的傻里傻气的视频取悦朋友和陌生人。便宜的流量套餐和闪存盘为数百万可能至今未去过电影院的人带来了盗版电影。约会应用比耕种建议更流行，电子游戏又比这两者都更受欢迎。这类福利不太可能出现在联合国的众多发展报告中，但它们的确增加了人类的幸福感。

　　窗体底端

　　For businesses, the second half of the internet offers a vast pool of customers. It also brings a headache—most of these new users are too poor to spend very much. Tens of billions of dollars in venture-capital money have flowed into internet startups in emerging markets, excluding China. The Silicon Valley giants have built up big user bases—over 1.5bn Facebook users are in developing countries. YouTube, a video site owned by Google, is increasingly dominated by non-Western users. Last year Walmart spent $16bn buying Flipkart, an Indian e-commerce giant. Jumia, an e-commerce firm with 4m customers in Nigeria and 13 other African countries, floated in New York in April.

　　对于企业来说，互联网的下半程发展提供了一个巨大的客户群。但这也带来了一个麻烦…大多数新用户很穷，没多少钱可花。在不包括中国在内的新兴市场，已经有数百亿美元的风险资本流入了互联网创业公司。硅谷巨头们已经在那里建立了庞大的用户基础，Facebook有超过1 5亿用户在发展中国家。谷歌旗下视频网站YouTube渐渐由非西方用户占据了主流。去年，沃尔玛斥资1 60亿美元收购了印度电子商务巨头Flipkart。电子商务公司Jumia在尼日利亚和其他13个非洲国家拥有400万客户，今年4月在纽约上市。

　　Despite these firms’ punchy valuations, they are still looking for sustainable business models. Reliance Jio, an Indian firm, has sunk $37bn into building a high-speed mobile network and acquiring a big base of mostly poor users. Each Facebook user in Asia generates only $11 of advertising revenue a year, compared with $112 for a North American one. The combined revenue of all the internet firms in emerging markets (excluding China) is perhaps $100bn a year. That is about the same size as Comcast, America’s 31st-biggest listed firm by sales.

　　尽管这些公司的估值很高，但它们仍在寻找可持续的商业模式。印度公司Reliance Jio已投入370亿美元建设高速移动网络，而它获得的庞大客户中大部分为贫困人群o Facebook在亚洲的每名用户每年只产生11美元的广告收入，而北美用户为112美元。在除中国外的新兴市场，全体互联网公司的年收入总额可能为1000亿美元，与美国第31大上市公司康卡斯特( Comcast)的销售额相当。

　　Nonetheless, the impact of these firms on business will get bigger in two ways. First, they will grow fast—although whether fast enough to justify their valuations remains to be seen. To maximise their chances, many are offering not just a single service (such as search or video), as Western firms tended to in their early years, but a bundle of services in one app instead, in the hope of making more money per user. This approach was pioneered in China by Alibaba and Tencent. Go-Jek in Indonesia offers ride-hailing, payments, drug prescriptions and massages. Facebook is pushing a digital payments system in India through its chat service, WhatsApp.

　　尽管如此，这些公司将从两方面对商业产生更大的影响。首先，它们将快速增长，尽管增速是否足以支撑其估值仍有待观察。为尽量提高成功的机会，许多公司不是像早期的西方公司那样提供单一的服务(如搜索或视频).而是在一个应用中提供一系列服务，以期在每个用户上赚到更多钱。这种方法由阿里巴巴和腾讯在中国率先采用。Go-Jek在印尼提供叫车、支付、开药和按摩服务。Facebook正通过其聊天应用WhatsApp在印度推出一个数字支付系统。

　　The second is that in the emerging world, established firms are likely to be disrupted more quickly than incumbents were in the rich world. They have less infrastructure, such as warehouses and retail sites, to act as a barrier to entry. Many people, especially outside the big cities, lack access to their services entirely. Beer, shampoo and other consumer-goods firms could find that as marketing goes digital, new insurgent brands gain traction faster. Banks will be forced to adapt quickly to digital payments or die. Viewed this way, there is a huge amount of money at stake—the total market value of incumbent firms in the emerging world, outside China, is $8trn. If you thought the first half of the internet revolution was disruptive, just wait until you see the second act.

　　其次，在新兴市场，成熟企业被颠覆的速度很可能要比过去在发达国家所发生的更快。它们拥有的可作为准入门槛的基础设施(如仓库和零售场所)更少。许多人一一特别是大城市以外的人群一一完全无法使用它们的服务。啤酒、洗发水和其他消费品公司可能会发现，随着营销走向数字化，新生的“叛军”品牌会更快地获得吸引力。银行将被迫迅速适应数字支付，否则就会倒闭。从这个角度来看，一大笔资本岌岌可危一一在中国以外的新兴市场，成熟企业的总市值为八万亿美元。如果你认为互联网革命的前半段是颠覆性的，那等着看第二幕如何吧。

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