为何说推特CEO来中国是件有意思的事

Twitter Inc. Chief Executive Dick Costolo is in Shanghai for a few days, but that doesn't mean Twitter will follow.

推特(Twitter)首席执行长科斯特罗(Dick Costolo)人在上海，他将在这里小住几日，但这不意味这推特也会跟随他的脚步进入中国。

The U.S. social media network confirmed Monday that Mr. Costolo was in China to 'learn more about Chinese culture and the country's thriving technology sector.'

推特周一确认，科斯特罗人在上海，他到中国来是为了更多地了解中国文化和中国正在蓬勃发展的科技业。

Mr. Costolo will be meeting with professors and students from Shanghai's famed Fudan University as well as government officials and business leaders, according to a person familiar with the visit.

据了解科斯特罗这次访问的人说，他将与上海复旦大学的一些教授和学生见面，同时参加的还包括政府官员和商界领袖。

Though it might be tempting to assume Mr. Costolo is in fact feeling out the possibility getting Twitter into China, it's unlikely that's the case. In its statement, Twitter also said that it has 'no plans to change anything about our service in order to enter the market.'

尽管有人或许会推论，科斯特罗来中国实际上是为推特进入中国的可能性做一番探查，但实际情况可能并非如此。推特在声明中还说，没有计划为了进入这一市场对我们的服务做出任何改变。

In China, most Internet companies are tasked with monitoring and censoring their social networks. Were Twitter to set up in China, it would almost certainly have to cooperate with the Chinese government's censorship demands -- something it is signaling it will not do.

在中国，大多数互联网公司都会承担监督和审查其社交网络的任务。如果推特进入中国，几乎可以肯定，它也要配合中国政府的审查要求，而推特发出的信号则表明它不会这么做。

Even if Twitter were to try to cooperate with the Chinese government, it would be unlikely to get a stamp of approval.

即便推特是要试图与中国政府合作，也不大可能得到批准。

The service has been blocked in China since 2009, due to government concerns it could be used to organize protests like those that were helping topple regimes in the Middle East at the time, according to analysts. Fears that social media could be used to coordinate protests against the government are alive and well in China, which is in the midst of a sustained government crackdown on online discourse.

分析人士说，自从2009年开始，推特在中国的服务就被封了，原因是政府担心它可能被用来组织抗议（当时，类似的抗议在推翻一些中东国家政府方面发挥了作用）。在中国，有关社交媒体可以被用来协调反对政府的抗议者的担忧大有市场，正因如此，政府才对互联网言论进行持续不断的打击。

Instead of trying to get Twitter into China, Mr. Costolo may simply be seeking to understand the world's largest and most isolated Internet market. Though many products on China's Internet remain copies of products coming out in the U.S., intense local competition and specific demands of local users are slowly leading Chinese companies to push in directions not anticipated by Silicon Valley.

科斯特罗并非试图让推特进入中国，他可能只是希望了解中国这个全球最大、但也最封闭的互联网市场。尽管中国互联网上的许多产品仍是美国产品的复制，但本地竞争的加剧和本地用户的特殊需求正逐渐促使中国企业在硅谷预料之外的道路上推进。

Beijing Momo Technology Co., a dating app that had about 35 million monthly active users at the end of 2013, pre-dated its U.S. equivalent, Tinder. Another example that likely hits closer to home for Mr. Costolo is Sina Corp.'s Weibo, which popularized a number of features that would eventually make it into Twitter. Though Weibo still looks and feels very complicated to a U.S. Internet user, it pre-dated Twitter in allowing embedded comments and replies to a post and also to giving photos a prominent presence in a users' stream.

北京陌陌科技有限公司(Beijing Momo Technology Co.)旗下有一款约会应用，2013年年底的月度活跃用户数约为3,500万。早在美国市场推出同类产品Tinder之前，这款应用就已经推出了。对于科斯特罗，另外一个例子可能更有参考价值，这就是新浪公司(Sina Corp.)旗下的微博(Weibo)。新浪微博推广了一些功能，而这些功能将最终使它媲美推特。尽管对于美国互联网用户来说，新浪微博在外观和感觉上都还非常复杂，但新浪微博早在推特之前就允许用户对发布的内容进行嵌入式评论和回复，同时还在用户数据流中给照片提供了一个重要地位。

For years now, China's start-ups have been studying how Silicon Valley works. Valley executives give talks at a proliferating number of start-up accelerators and cafes where entrepreneurs hang out. Some companies, like app search engine Wandoujia, even send employees on yearly trips to northern California to learn more about the culture, and visit the headquarters of the most iconic U.S. Internet firms.

多年来，中国初创企业一直在学习硅谷模式。在数量不断增多的创业加速器以及企业家喜欢去的咖啡厅内，硅谷高管们会发表演讲。应用搜索引擎豌豆荚(Wandoujia)等公司甚至每年都会派员工前往加州北部，以便更深入地学习硅谷文化并访问最有代表性的美国互联网公司的总部。

Mr. Costolo may well be the first wave of Americans doing the reverse, coming to China to look for new features, business models and even products that could do well if brought back to the U.S. Even if the trip isn't as pointed as that, it still shows that China's Internet market, though isolated from much of the world, has a gravity all its own that has an increasing pull to those thousands of miles away in the U.S.

科斯特罗很可能是第一批反其道而行的美国人，到中国来寻找新的特色和商业模式，甚至寻找那些带回美国就可能有良好表现的产品。即便这种访问并不那么有目的性，但这仍表明，尽管中国互联网市场与世界大部分地区相对孤立，但这一市场本身就是非常重要的，对那些远在千里之外的美国人产生了越来越大的吸引力。