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      考研英语阅读能力想提升，需要考生不断地日积月累阅读文章才能感受到进步!接下来，小编为帮助考生补习英语阅读能力的不足，特意整理——2022考研英语经济学人:Clubhouse究竟能火多久?供考生参考。

2022考研英语经济学人:Clubhouse究竟能火多久?

One of silicon valley’s most successful inventions is hype. It usually disappoints. In 2015 live-streaming from smartphones became all the rage. But Meerkat, an app which pioneered it, shut down the following year. On April 1st Periscope, its more successful rival, did too (no joke). Will Clubhouse, a buzzy app that hosts live audio gabfests, suffer the same fate?

炒作是硅谷最成功的一项发明。但结果往往令人失望。2015年，手机直播风靡一时。但率先推出这一功能的应用 Meerkat 在第二年就下架了。今年4月1日，Meerkat 的昔日劲敌 Periscope 也下架了(这不是在开玩笑)。那么，即时语音聊天社交应用 Clubhouse 也会面临同样的命运吗?

Launched at the start of the pandemic last March, Clubhouse quickly became Silicon Valley’s most-talked-about app and a favourite stage for rock-star entrepreneurs.

去年3月新冠肺炎疫情爆发之初上线的 Clubhouse 很快便成为了硅谷最受关注的应用，也成为了摇滚明星般的企业家最喜欢的舞台。

Elon Musk offered his views on colonising Mars and rewiring the brain to thousands of listeners. Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, co-founders of a big venture-capital firm, regularly hold forth.

埃隆·马斯克与成千上万的听众分享了他对殖民火星和脑机接口的看法。一家大型风险投资公司的联合创始人马克·安德森和本·霍洛维茨也在 Clubhouse 上侃侃而谈。

More mortal Valleyites discuss everything from the future of San Francisco to the testy relations between tech and the media. This year the Clubhouse craze went global, offering a venue for frank conversations in places from Saudi Arabia to South Korea.

硅谷更多的普通人则在 Clubhouse 上谈论着从旧金山的未来到科技公司与媒体之间的紧张关系等各种话题。今年，Clubhouse 更是火遍了全球，为从沙特阿拉伯到韩国等地的人们提供了一个坦诚交流的平台。

Amid the buzz, problems are emerging. You still need an invitation from an existing user, but these are easy to come by. As newcomers flood the app, the quality of debate has dropped.

喧嚣之下，问题正在显现。想要成为 Clubhouse 的用户仍需现有用户的邀请，不过这一点很容易做到。随着新用户的大量涌入，辩论的质量日渐低下。

Without systematic moderation, chats entitled “How to discipline and train your women” or worse are popping up. Despite lower barriers to entry, the app’s downloads were down to 2.7m in March, from 9.6m in February, according to Sensor Tower, a data provider.

由于缺乏系统性监管，时常就会出现“如何调教女性”甚至更恶劣的话题。据数据提供商 Sensor Tower 统计，虽然成为 Clubhouse 用户的门槛很低，但该应用的下载量已从今年2月的960万次降至今年3月的270万次。

On the business side, Clubhouse has yet to work out how to make money (ideas include tipping and membership fees for virtual clubs). And, predictably, big tech firms are jumping on the bandwagon. Twitter is testing a similar feature (and is reported to have considered buying Clubhouse).

在商业方面，Clubhouse 尚未探索出盈利模式(设想的盈利模式包括粉丝打赏和平台会员)。而且不出所料的是，科技巨头们也将纷至沓来。推特正在测试一项类似的功能(据报道，推特已经考虑收购 Clubhouse 了)。

Facebook is expected to launch a clone soon. On March 30th Spotify acquired Locker Room, a sports-themed group-chat app. Even LinkedIn and Slack, two business-oriented services, are following suit.

脸书预计也将很快推出一款类似应用。今年3月30日，Spotify 收购了体育主题的群聊应用 Locker Room。甚至就连面向企业的领英和Slack也加入了这一行列。

It is too early to count Clubhouse out. It has name recognition and could remain the go-to place for virtual talk shows, as Twitter is for instant opinions. It is run by Paul Davison, an experienced social-media entrepreneur. It has plenty of cash: in December it raised $100m, much of it from Andreessen Horowitz.

现在说 Clubhouse 将要出局还为时过早。毕竟它有知名度，可能仍会是线上脱口秀的首选平台，就像推特作为即时评论的首选应用一样。Clubhouse 的老板保罗·戴维森是一位经验丰富的社交媒体企业家。Clubhouse 有着充足的现金储备：去年12月融资1亿美元，其中大部分来自安德森-霍洛维茨基金。

It is reportedly seeking new funding at a valuation of $4bn. And it has yet to release a version of its app for Android, Google’s popular mobile operating system. Optimists point to Snapchat, a social network beloved of teenagers, which has found a lucrative niche in a market dominated by Facebook.

据报道，Clubhouse 正在以40亿美元的估值寻求新一轮的融资。此外，Clubhouse 尚未推出安卓版(谷歌开发的广为流行的手机操作系统)。乐观者指出，深受青少年喜爱的社交应用 Snapchat 不是也在由脸书主导的市场中找到了有利可图的利基市场。

This suggests that even if Clubhouse looks Periscopic in a year’s time, group chats are likely to remain a feature of social media after the pandemic recedes. Meerkat and Periscope may be dead, but live streaming is alive and well—albeit as a service within larger social-media platforms.

这表明，即时一年后 Clubhouse 步了 periscopical 的后尘，在疫情消退后，语音群聊很可能仍会是社交媒体的类型之一。Meerkat 和 Periscope 已经失败了，但手机直播仍然存在，并且十分火热——尽管是作为更大的社交媒体平台上的一项服务而存在。

Tech hype may be grating, but it serves a purpose. Buzz incites consumers to try new things, venture capitalists to put up the cash and entrepreneurs to experiment—even if, more often than not, pioneers wind up in the digital dustbin.

科技炒作或许令人不快，但它也有一定益处。消费者在炒作下愿意去尝试新的事物，风险资本家会投入资金，鼓励企业家去做尝试——尽管先驱们往往会被扔进数字时代的垃圾箱里。

 

重难点词汇：

pioneer [ˌpaɪəˈnɪr] n. 先锋;拓荒者 v. 开辟;倡导

bandwagon [ˈbændwæɡən] n. 流行;时尚;潮流

lucrative [ˈluːkrətɪv] adj. 有利的

      以上是“2022考研英语经济学人:Clubhouse究竟能火多久?”，希望对2022考研考生们，在英语阅读上面有所帮助!祝2022考研顺利!

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