新华网10月16日电 据美国科技博客Gizmodo报道，未来学家弗兰克·费瑟在2000年预测了2010年前50名的在线零售网站，那么他的预测到底有多大的准确率呢？
费瑟的《FutureConsumer.com：2010年网络销售革命》封面
有人记得Webvan.com么？在美国很多人记得，但是你很难把好的形容词和这个网站联系在一起。在互联网零售革命的初期，这个网站被大家认为会成为现在零售业的亚马逊。这个网站失败的一塌糊涂，但是2000年的未来学家们没有预测到这些。
Webvan.com成立于1999年，当年在硅谷是非常高调的网站，后面也有金融巨鳄撑腰。但是到2001年，这家网站成了.com时代泡沫经济破灭的巨大牺牲品之一，18个月里烧掉了10亿美元，开除了4500名员工。在上市后，Webvan.com的股价一度升到30美元一股，几个月后就暴跌到6美分一股。
即使是互联网时代到来之前，预测零售情况也是非常困难的。客户的喜好变化无常，各种品牌来了又走，很难预测一年以后会有什么消费品热销，更别说是10年之后的了。但是在2000年，未来学家弗兰克·费瑟就敢预测2010年在线零售商的排名。
费瑟的《FutureConsumer.com：2010年网络销售革命》涉及了从音乐下载到零售品配送的方方面面，书里特别突出他的预测名单。费瑟的2010年50大网络零售商排名成了保存第一个网络泡沫经济破灭的时间胶囊。在这个名单里，Webvan很自然地进入前五名。
互联网零售商五强（按规模排名）
Wal-Mart
AOL-TimeWarner
Amazon.com
Webvan.com
Quixtar.com
Quixtar大家也许不熟悉，它是一个“多层销售”企业，而且绝不是传销。2009年公司被安利收入囊中，Quixtar这个品牌也就消失了。
其他45家企业的名单不是按照规模排列，而是按照字母顺序。
AutoByTel.com
AutoNation.com
Bertelsmann/Barnes & Noble
Borders
CarsDirect.com
Citibank
CVS
Dell
Disney
Dow Jones
Edison
E*Trade
Fannie Mae
Ford-Carpoint
Gap
GE
GMBuyPower
Healtheon/WebMD
Home Depot
Intuit/Quicken
JonesInternational.edu
KnightRidder
Kroger
Microsoft
NewsCorp
New York Times
Nordstrom
Office Depot
JCPenney
Petopia.com
Realtor.com
Safeway
CharlesSchwab
Sears
Softbank
Sony
Travelocity.com
UNext.com
USAToday
Viacom
Virgin
Walgreen
Washington Post
Wells Fargo
就像所有未来学家的预测一样，费瑟的预测有对有错，但是有些网站看起来确实太离谱了。Petopia.com是什么玩意儿？有谁记得Knight Ridder？还有，愿Borders网络书店安息吧。
不过名单上有些公司预测的也还算靠谱。费瑟很明智地把一些大公司名列其中，包括银行、消费品和主要媒体公司。有些网站到现在已经与2000年的时候大相径庭，还有一些合资公司破裂了，比如福特和微软的在线售车网站Ford-Carpoint。但当时我们认为很不错的公司也没能把成功延续到2000年之后。如果Webvan都遭遇惨败，那么谁能保证亚马逊这样的网站就能系上安全带呢？不能。但是费瑟精确地预测亚马逊这类公司（甚至延伸到沃尔玛）能在2010年在线零售业成为领军企业。
名单里的许多公司（特别是报业公司）都不像费瑟预测的那样活得很好。而且好像是为了证明网站生命的短暂，费瑟这本书的future-consumer.com也早就不更新了。
随便搜一搜费瑟这个名字，他在现在这个时代好像也能成为一个不错的未来学家。我不知道他会预测哪些网站成为2020年最大的网络零售商。我们这个时代的Webvan是谁？有没有希望避免新的网络泡沫破灭？大概只有时间（还有无数的美元）能给出答案。
译者：林杉
百度新闻与新华网国际频道合作稿件，转载请注明出处。
The 50 Biggest Websites of 2010 (As Predicted in 2000)
Remember Webvan.com? A lot of people do, but you'd be hard pressed to find someone with anything nice to say about it. At the dawn of the internet retail revolution, Webvan was supposed to do for groceries what Amazon had done for books. The site failed miserably. But that's not what futurists of the year 2000 predicted for it.
Founded in 1999, Webvan was a high-profile darling of Silicon Valley with major financial backers. And yet, by 2001, the company was one of the largest failures of the first dot-com bust, blowing through $1 billion in just 18 months and firing over 4,500 employees. After it went public, Webvan's stock climbed to $30 per share. A few months later, the stock had crashed to just $0.06 per share.
Even before the advent of the internet, predicting the future of retail was an incredibly hard business. Customers are fickle. Brands come and go. And it's hard to tell what might be popular in consumer goods a year from now, let alone ten years from now. But in the year 2000, futurist Frank Feather dared to predict what the online retail landscape might look like by the year 2010.
The awkwardly titled book, FutureConsumer.com: The webolution of shopping to 2010, touches on everything from music downloads to grocery delivery, with a big emphasis on lists. And it's Feather's list for the 50 largest online retailers of 2010 which now stands as a fascinating time capsule of the first dot-com bubble. Naturally, Webvan makes the Top 5.
The Big 5 (by order of size)
Wal-Mart
AOL-TimeWarner
Amazon.com
Webvan.com
Quixtar.com
Quixtar, for those unfamiliar, was one of those "multi-level marketing" businesses that is totally not a pyramid scheme. In 2009, the company was folded into Amway, which dropped the Quixtar brand.
The next 45 biggest weren't put in order of size, but rather listed alphabetically.
AutoByTel.com
AutoNation.com
Bertelsmann/Barnes & Noble
Borders
CarsDirect.com
Citibank
CVS
Dell
Disney
Dow Jones
Edison
E*Trade
Fannie Mae
Ford-Carpoint
Gap
GE
GMBuyPower
Healtheon/WebMD
Home Depot
Intuit/Quicken
JonesInternational.edu
KnightRidder
Kroger
Microsoft
NewsCorp
New York Times
Nordstrom
Office Depot
JCPenney
Petopia.com
Realtor.com
Safeway
CharlesSchwab
Sears
Softbank
Sony
Travelocity.com
UNext.com
USAToday
Viacom
Virgin
Walgreen
Washington Post
Wells Fargo
Like nearly all predictions from futurists, Feather got a few right and a few wrong. But there are some sites on the list that look way out of place. What the hell is Petopia.com? Or remember Knight Ridder? And may Borders bookstore rest in peace.
Otherwise, some of these predictions weren't half bad. It was a smart move on his part to stick with a lot of established companies, including banks, consumer goods and major media companies. Not all of these are even in the same form that they were in 2000, and a few were failed joint ventures like Ford-Carpoint, Ford's online sales partnership with Microsoft. But even what we consider a solid company wasn't a lock to succeed beyond 2000. If Webvan failed so hard, who's to say that a site like Amazon was even close to a safe bet? It wasn't. But Feathers accurately predicted that companies like Amazon (and even Walmart, to a certain extent) would dominate the online retail space in 2010.
Many of the companies (the newspaper companies especially) aren't doing quite as well as Feather had predicted. And in perhaps the most telling example of just how ephemeral the internet is, the website for Feather's book, future-consumer.com, is no longer active.
Doing a cursory search for his name, Feather seems to be doing quite well as a business futurist here in the future. I wonder what he'd predict might be the biggest online retailers of 2020. Who's the Webvan of our generation? Is there any hope of avoiding a new dot-com bubble burst? Only time (and billions upon billions of dollars) will tell, I suppose.
Image: Frank Feather, scanned from the 2000 book futureconsumer.com: The webolution of shopping to 2010
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