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Here, in 140 characters or less, is some free advice for Twitter’s next chief executive: Focus on live events. People never tire of gabbing about what’s going on right now. Twitter could be the best place for that. Do it fast.
在这里，我要用不到140个字符，为Twitter的下任首席执行官提供一些免费建议：侧重在实时事件上。人永远不会厌倦谈论当下正在发生的事情。Twitter可能就是最适合进行这种谈论的地方。速度要快。
That may sound a bit simplistic. The news that Dick Costolo will resign at the end of this month is sure to elicit a raft of doomsaying commentary about the company. Mr. Costolo, who since 2010 has been chief executive of Twitter, the service that lets people post 140-character messages, helped take the company public in 2013 and built it into a Silicon Valley force.
这听起来可能有点过于简单化了。迪克·科斯特罗(Dick Costolo)将在本月底辞职，这个消息一定会引发一些评论，说Twitter末日将至。科斯特洛自2010年以来一直是其首席执行官，在他任内，这个让用户发布140字符信息的服务在2013年上市，并且成为一支硅谷的主要力量。
Along the way, however, Twitter’s audience growth stalled, and its advertising business looks to be cooling. From afar, Twitter can sometimes look dysfunctional, especially compared with its robotically disciplined competitors in the social networking business, among them Facebook and Pinterest, whose fortunes all burn brighter.
然而Twitter用户增长停滞，广告业务看上去日益冷清。总体来看，Twitter有时候显得运转不灵，尤其不如它在社交网络领域那些井井有条的竞争对手，比如Facebook和Pinterest，前景都比它好。
Among some investors and users, there is now a more straightforward and optimistic case to be made for the rebirth of Twitter under a new chief. That case involves focus. Twitter, as a service, is many things to many people at different times. It is one of the world’s best sources for news and for jokes about news, a playground for professional networking, and a haven for that most human of pastimes, idle gossip.
在一些投资者和用户看来，Twitter要下一个首席执行官手中重生，目前有一个更直接的、更乐观的原因。它关乎侧重点。Twitter作为一个服务，对很多人来说，在不同时间里有很多不同的用途。它是世界上最好的新闻来源，以及有关新闻的笑话的来源，也是职业人脉活动的平台，还是很多人消遣、闲聊的避风港。
But because the service offers so many uses, Twitter, as a company, has had trouble focusing on one purpose for which it should aim to excel. The lack of concentration has damaged its prospects with users, investors and advertisers. Choosing a single intent for Twitter — and working to make that a reality — ought to be the next chief’s main task.
但由于它提供了这么多的用途，Twitter作为一家公司，难以侧重在一个它应该出类拔萃的目标上。缺乏侧重点的问题已严重损害了它在用户、投资者和广告主眼中的形象。给Twitter选择一个目标——并努力实现它——应该成为其下一任首席执行官的主要任务。
Among the many uses that Twitter fulfills as a social network, there is one it is uniquely suited for: as a global gathering space for live events. When something goes down in the real world — when a plane crashes, an earthquake strikes, a basketball game gets crazy, or Kanye West hijacks an awards show — Twitter should aim to become the first and only app that people load up to comment on the news.
作为一个社交网络，Twitter拥有众多用途，其中有一个用途，没有谁比它更适合：实时事件的全球聚会空间。Twitter的目标应该是：当现实世界中发生什么事情——飞机失事、地震来袭，一场篮球赛打得非常精彩，或者坎耶·韦斯特(Kanye West)抢了一场颁奖晚会的风头——它是人们打开的第一个、也是唯一一个应用，来对新闻发表评论。
We live in an era dominated by time-shifted media. Just about everything worth watching can be watched later, when it’s more convenient. Even so, many of us find experiencing media communally to be a deeply meaningful experience — much more meaningful than watching it later. The desire for communal experiences explains why the Super Bowl is still a mega TV event, why ESPN has grown to become one of the most valuable media properties on the planet, and why HBO has turned Sunday nights into a marquee time for television.
我们生活的这个时代是由时移媒体主导的。一切值得看的东西都可以晚点再看，到方便的时候再看。即便如此，仍然有很多人觉得，共同在媒体上获得体验具有深刻的意义——远远超过晚一点再看。共同体验的愿望，也解释了为什么超级碗仍然是一个大型电视活动，为什么ESPN变成了这个星球上最有价值的媒体之一，为什么HBO让周日晚上成为了一个电视狂欢节。
Twitter is well-positioned to take advantage of this desire. It is already among the best places online for consuming news and commentary about live events. It would be ridiculous for many fans of the N.B.A. or of “Scandal” to watch TV without having Twitter nearby. Yet that behavior still remains a niche. Twitter’s next chief could change that, adding a few simple features that might transform the service into a required accessory for experiencing anything live.
Twitter完全有条件去利用这种意愿。在消费实时活动的新闻和评论方面，它已经是最好的网上服务之一。对于很多NBA球迷或《丑闻》(Scandal)的粉丝来看，看电视的时候不打开Twitter是很可笑的事。然而，这种做法尚未成为主流。 Twitter的下一任首席执行官可能会改变这种状况，添加几个简单的功能，让Twitter成为一个体验实时事件必不可少的应用。
How should Twitter do that? Tech journalists and tech investors have spilled thousands of tweets over the years in attempts to account for the general unpopularity of Twitter. Though Twitter has brought out an accelerating set of improvements over the last year, it remains a punishingly difficult service to get accustomed to and use. Twitter may be alone among large social networks in turning away more people away than it attracts. About 300 million people use it every month, but more than a billion have signed up and quit.
Twitter应该如何做到这一点呢？数年来，科技界的记者和投资者已经发表了数以千计的推文，试图解释Twitter总体上不得人心的原因。尽管在过去一年里，Twitter已经加快脚步，推出了一套改善措施，它迄今仍然是一个难以熟悉和使用的服务。Twitter可能是唯一一个吸引到的人比放弃它的人少的大型社交网络。每个月约有3亿人在使用它，但有逾10亿注册用户不再使用它。
Last week, in an extremely detailed post on his blog, the venture capitalist Chris Sacca, one of the earliest and larger investors in Twitter and an inveterate fan of the service, outlined the most straightforward recipe for Twitter to own live events. Much of what he called for could be easily done now. For every live event that generates tweets — whether it be news or a sporting event or a TV show — Twitter could create a dedicated section of the app.
风险投资人克里斯·萨卡(Chris Sacca)是Twitter最早也较大的投资者之一，而且还是该服务的超级铁杆粉丝。上周，他在博客上发表了一篇非常详细的文章，对于Twitter如何直播实时事件，列出了一些简单直接的方式。他建议的很多东西，现在都是可以轻松办到的。对于每一个可以产出推文的实时事件——无论是新闻、体育赛事，还是电视节目——Twitter都可以在应用中创建一个专门的板块。
Say the N.B.A. finals are heating up (which they are), and Twitter knows you like basketball. The app would send you a notification, tap to see the best tweets timed to the moment — with photos, videos, commentary and, of course, jokes all focused on that event. In other words, an instant community talking about something you are interested in, and one that you can’t help getting glued to, because it’s about something happening live.
假设NBA总决赛正在升温（事实的确如此），而Twitter知道你喜欢篮球。该应用就会给你发一条通知，点击就可以查看最好最应时的推文——有照片、视频、评论，当然还有笑话，全都侧重在那场篮球比赛上。换句话说，这是一个实时社区，谈论你感兴趣的东西，你对它无法自拔，因为它讲的是正在发生的事情。
Twitter does some of this now, but not nearly as well as it could. When the Golden State Warriors were playing the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 3 of the N.B.A. finals on Tuesday night, I saw people tweeting about the game when I loaded up the Twitter app. I’m not usually interested in basketball, but the tweets suggested this was an amazing game, so I stayed fixed to the screen.
这方面的工作Twitter目前也做了一些，但没有它本应有的那么好。本周二晚上，金州勇士队(Golden State Warriors)和克利夫兰骑士队(Cleveland Cavaliers)进行NBA决赛的第3场比赛时，我打开Twitter应用，看到人们在发关于这场比赛的推文。我通常对篮球不怎么感兴趣，但推文里说这场比赛打得很精彩，所以我决定看一看。
Twitter made the experience difficult. I couldn’t see a running score, I didn’t know whose accounts to follow for the best stuff about the game, and basketball tweets were mixed in with ordinary posts about everything else. Tapping on some N.B.A. hashtags created a more focused feed, but it was still a messy experience, with lots of repetition, and, worse, boring tweets. The only reason I stuck with it is because I’m already a Twitter addict. Most people would have bailed.
在Twitter上体验这个事情很困难。我看不到实时的比分增加，我不知道该关注哪些帐号才能看到有关这场比赛的最精彩的内容，篮球方面的推文和所有其他一般性的推文混在在一起。点击一些关于NBA的＃标签，可以看到重点更集中的推文，但仍然相当混乱，有很多重复内容，而且更糟糕的是，很多无聊的内容。我坚持看下去唯一的理由就是我已经是个“Twitter迷”了。大多数人可能都会放弃。
Mr. Sacca offered many obvious improvements to Twitter’s problems with live viewing. Twitter, he suggested, should hire human editors to create curated feeds for special events. It should offer these specialized feeds to users who don’t check in to the service very much, without requiring them to log in or to follow certain accounts permanently.
对于Twitter在现场直播方面的问题，萨卡提供了很多明显的改进建议。他建议Twitter雇佣编辑人员来规划特别活动的推文。Twitter还应该提供一些专门的推文给那些不常登录它的用户，而不是总是要求他们登录或关注某些帐户。
“Done right, live Twitter will have sports scores and TV listings front and center and will be the place everyone visits first to see how the game is going or when the show starts,” he wrote.
“正确做法是，‘Twitter直播’会有比赛成绩和电视节目表，放在靠前和中心位置，大家最先就会去这个地方，看看比赛进行得怎么样了，或者比赛什么时候开始，”他写道。
The best analog for Mr. Sacca’s vision is a digital-era version of television or radio — a global coming together in an otherwise lifeless, anodyne digital world. Twitter’s next chief could build such a thing. And it could be glorious.
萨卡的设想，就好比是打造一个数字时代的电视台或电台——在一个原本缺乏生机、平淡无奇的数字世界中，让大家聚集一堂。 Twitter下一任首席执行官可以打造出这样的东西。那将是非常出彩的。
