WhatsApp famously reached 450m users around the world without spending so much as a dime on marketing. Facebook bought the instant-message service for (ahem) 190bn dimes not long afterward.
众所周知，WhatsApp没在市场营销上花一分钱，就将其全球用户规模做到了4.5亿人。此后不久，Facebook就斥资（咳咳）190亿美元收购了这家即时通讯服务公司。
Old-fashioned valuation is scarily irrelevant in the world of chat apps. The game is conquering a world of millions of smartphone users. Such petty details as actually earning money off these users are left for the distant future by anyone buying Facebook’s stock at 50 times forward earnings.
在聊天应用领域，传统估值方法几乎毫无用处。这一领域的竞争目标，在于赢得数以百万计的智能手机用户。至于如何从这些用户身上实实在在挣到钱这种细枝末节的问题，是留给很久以后以50倍预期市盈率的价格购买Facebook股票的投资者的。
Still, the bet assumes barriers to entry will exist to protect future earnings in the app market. That seems weird for a business built on flighty electrons. But hope lies with the sheer network effect of lots of users. Zero marketing costs at WhatsApp feeds this hope.
不过，投资者眼下仍然押注于一种假定，即市场进入门槛将持续存在，能保护应用市场的未来盈利空间。对于一项建立在更新换代频繁的电子产品基础上的业务而言，这个假定似乎有些奇怪。但投资者但从大量用户带来的网络效应就看到了希望。而WhatsApp市场营销支出为零的做法，进一步强化了这种希望。
The rise in marketing spend at Tencent should deflate it back a bit. China’s biggest internet company (market capitalisation: $140bn) has plenty of users on its WeChat network, too: 355m, at the end of 2013. WeChat and WhatsApp may each eventually rise to 1bn users, Macquarie reckons. While WeChat has Asia-Pacific presence already, WhatsApp needs to dial into the region’s nearly 750m smartphones.
但腾讯(Tencent)在市场营销方面的支出增长，应该会让这种希望略微降温。中国第一大互联网企业（市值1400亿美元）腾讯旗下的微信(WeChat)同样网罗了庞大的用户群：截至2013年底，微信的用户人数已达到3.55亿人。麦格理(Macquarie)认为，微信和WhatsApp各自的用户数量或许最终都将达到10亿人。微信在亚太地区已颇具市场影响力，而WhatsApp则仍需向这一地区近7.5亿的智能手机用户推广自己。
But when it comes to WeChat’s expansion elsewhere, the coin has turned – Tencent spent Rmb5.7bn ($920m) on sales and marketing last year compared to Rmb3bn a year earlier. It partly goes on WeChat TV ads featuring Bollywood actors in India, Lionel Messi in Europe and (er) WeChat Guy elsewhere. This is not growth by network effect alone.
但微信在向亚太以外的其他地区扩张时，情况就反过来了——腾讯去年在销售和市场营销方面花费了57亿元人民币（合9.2亿美元），高于上一年的30亿元人民币。部分支出用于在电视上为微信打广告，包括在印度邀请宝莱坞演员主演的广告，在欧洲地区邀请利昂内尔•梅西(Lionel Messi)出演的广告，以及在其他地区推出的WeChat Guy广告。这已不再是单纯依靠网络效应推动的增长。
This may not matter if Tencent can monetise growth. Its gross margin remains 55 per cent. Last year’s Rmb15.5bn in net profit shows the opportunity to be had integrating WeChat with Tencent’s workhorse, online gaming.
如果腾讯能将增长套现，这或许不会成为一个问题。腾讯的毛利率仍然维持在55%。去年该公司的净利润达到了155亿元人民币，表明将微信与腾讯的在线游戏业务相结合会带来巨大机遇。在线游戏业务是腾讯的盈利主力。
But the shares remain priced 40 times forward earnings. They were 12 times at the start of 2012, having risen with the help of a flood of Federal Reserve liquidity since then. Tencent has trailblazed in the era of chat-app land-grabs. What if world conquest gets dearer?
但目前腾讯的股票仍然保持着40倍的预期市盈率，这个数字在2012年初仅为12倍，在美联储(Federal Reserve)释放的大量流动性推动下一路走高至今。腾讯是聊天应用攻城略地时代的先驱者。但如果征服世界的成本变得更加昂贵了呢？