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现在的网络世界真是多姿多彩，你可以找资料、听音乐、看电影、打网游、购物……网上交友也不是新玩意了。想必很多人都听过、或者正在使用MySpace、Facebook这些知名社交网站。那你听说过myYearbook吗？它现在是美国第三大社交网站，在美国青少年中人气第一。最引人注意的是，这个网站的创办人是今年只有18岁的凯瑟琳·库克和她的哥哥。他们是怎样从普通中学生打拼成百万富翁的呢？一起来看看他们的故事——
Not long after Catherine Cook arrived at her new high school aged 15, she was flipping[翻动书页] through an old yearbook注1 with Dave, her 16-year-old brother, when they spotted the name of a girl they both knew. Yet the yearbook picture looked nothing like her. In that moment an Internet empire was born.
You have heard of Google, MySpace, Facebook and the boy geniuses[天才] who made billions from
brilliant computer ideas. Now meet a girl genius – a New Jersey teenager who turned a stroke of[一次成功的行动]
High School inspiration into what is now the fastest-growing online social network in America.
The website she launched with her brother at Montgomery high school in Skillman, New Jersey,
has exploded into a multi-million-dollar online
business, with 10 million members of myYearbook.com
registering[登记] and 1.5 billion page views a month.
Launched in 2005 with an initial[最初的] investment of $250,000, the site is now earning more than $10
million a year in advertising sales and Cook has
become a millionaire.
Hitwise, the leading Internet monitoring[监测] group, has calculated that in June myYearbook became the third largest online social network in the United States, behind MySpace and Facebook.
“We’ve had some offers from people who want to buy us out – and a few pretty big ones,” Cook said.
“But we’re not interested right now. I’m having too much fun working on the site.”
With their joky[爱开玩笑的] style, Cook and her brother may have dealt a death blow[打击某人] to the rather dreary[沉闷的] school annuals[年刊，年鉴] that in recent years have been read mainly by magazine editors, seeking embarrassing pictures of celebrities[名人].
“I realized when I was talking to Dave that those old yearbooks really sucked[（俚）糟糕],” said Cook, who wears big glasses and admits to being “a bit nerdish[（俚）书呆子的].”
She added: “The pictures always stink[很糟糕的] and the books never really tell you anything about the
person. So we thought: why not put it online? Why not have a profile page that can list your TV interests, the music you like, your extracurriculars[课外活动]?”
Neither Cook nor her brother knew anything about building a website, but family help was at
hand[在手边，即将到来]. Catherine and Dave have an older brother, Geoff, who had already made an Internet
fortune of his own while studying at Harvard University.
Geoff had devised[设计] and sold a pair of websites that helped students with essay writing and preparing CVs注2. He immediately saw the promise[有成功的希望] in his younger siblings’ [兄弟，姐妹] idea. He wrote them a check to get the website off the ground[（事业）顺利开始], and has since become the venture’s[风险事业] chief executive[执行官].
“Geoff is 11 years older than me,” said Cook. “He was running his websites out of Palm Springs, California,
and my mom used to send us out there to stay with him. His office was just so cool, and I knew when I saw it that I didn’t want a proper, typical job. I wanted to be an
entrepreneur[企业家].”
At 15, when most of her schoolmates were shopping at the mall and worrying about boys, Cook was firing off[发出一连串提问] e-mails to a team of website designers in Mumbai.
“It was very helpful to have a close personal
relationship with someone like Geoff,” she said.
“He knows how to hire programmers in India,
lease[租出，租得] server[服务器] space in Texas and start
conversations with venture capitalists in Silicon Valley注3.”
By April 2005 the family was ready to test its new toy. She and Dave turned up at school wearing T-shirts with slogans that read: “Are you the prettiest girl in school? How about the dumbest? Find out at myYearbook.com.”
As teenagers around the country flocked[聚结] to the site, they were followed by investors and advertisers. The site now employs 70 people, and Cook and her brothers may eventually be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Facebook, for example, which is privately
controlled, is estimated[估价] to be worth between $3
billion and $15 billion.
Cook is about to start her second year as a
student at Georgetown University in Washington DC, but she acknowledged[承认] that she was finding it hard to combine her studies with running a budding[开始发展的] website.
“I do want to graduate,” she said. “But I may have to take one or two years off to work on the website first.”
15岁的凯瑟琳·库克来到新高中后不久，有一次，她和16岁的哥哥戴夫在翻看一本旧的学校毕业年刊时，看见一个他们都认识的女孩的名字，然而年刊上的照片却一点也不像她。就在那一刻，一个互联网帝国诞生了。
你也许听过Google、MySpace和Facebook，以及那些通过非同凡响的电脑点子赚到亿万财富的天才少男。那么，现在来见识一位天才少女吧—这位来自（美国）新泽西州的少女将高中时代的灵光一现转变成现在美国增长速度最快的在线社交网络。
她和哥哥在新泽西州斯其尔曼市的蒙哥马利高中创始了这个网站，如今网站已经发展成一门价值数百万美元的网络生意。“myYearbook.com”拥有1000万名注册会员，每月页访问量达到15亿。
这个创建于2005年的网站当初只有25万美元的启动资金，而现在每年光靠销售广告就可以赚取超过1000万美元的利润。库克随之当上了百万富翁。
据领先的互联网监测团体“Hitwise”统计，myYearbook在（今年）6月份成为美国第三大在线社交网络，仅次于MySpace和Facebook。
“有一些人想出资收购我们的网站—其中有些出价相当高，”库克说。
“但我们目前无意这样做。经营这个网站，我忙得不亦乐乎。”
库克和哥哥的幽默风格可能给枯燥乏味的学校年刊带来致命的打击—近年来，这些年刊的主要读者都是一些搜寻名人过往尴尬照片的杂志编辑。
“我在和戴夫聊天时意识到那些年刊有多么差劲，”库克说。她戴着大大的眼镜，承认自己“有点儿呆”。
她又说：“（年刊里的）照片总是拍得很糟糕，而且这本书从来不能让你真正了解一个人。我们便想：为什么不把它放到网上？为什么不做一个个人简介页面，上面可以列出你喜爱的电视节目、音乐、以及课外活动呢？”
虽然库克和她的哥哥对建立网站一窍不通，但家人的帮助唾手可得。凯瑟琳和戴夫有一个哥哥叫杰夫，他在哈佛读大学时就已经为自己赚了一笔网络财。
杰夫曾经设计并售出两个帮助学生写论文和准备个人履历的网站。一听说小弟妹的主意，他就看到了其中蕴藏的商机。他给他们写了一张支票，资助他们启动网站的建设，同时成为这门生意的首席执行官。
“杰夫比我大11岁，”库克说。“他过去在加利福尼亚的棕榈泉经营自己的网站，妈妈经常送我们到他那边玩。他的办公室真是太酷了，我看见之后，就知道自己想要的不是一份循规蹈矩的传统工作，而是当一名企业家。”
15岁时，当其他女生还在商场购物或者整天为男生烦恼时，库克正忙着给一个孟买的网站设计团队发送一连串邮件。
“能和像杰夫这样的人关系密切，真的很有帮助，”她说。
“他知道怎样雇用印度的程序员、在德克萨斯州租赁服务器空间，以及如何联系硅谷的风险资本家。”
到了2005年4月，这个家庭已经准备好测试他们的新玩具。她和戴夫穿着T恤去上学，T恤上面印着这样的口号：“你是学校里最美丽的女孩吗？还是最闷骚的？答案尽在myYearbook.com。”
随着全国各地的青少年蜂拥登录这个网站，这对兄妹也成为投资者和广告商的追逐对象。网站如今聘请了70名员工，而库克和她的哥哥最后的身价可能会超过数百万美元。例如由私人运营的Facebook，据估计其价值达到30至150亿美元。
现在，库克即将开始在华盛顿特区乔治城大学第二年的学习。不过她承认，要做到读书学习和经营网站两不误确实有难度。
“我当然想毕业，”她说。“但我可能不得不先休学一两年，把网站做好再说。”
相关链接
myYearbook网址 http://www.myyearbook.com/
网站口号
“You’ve Got Friends!”（库克兄妹认为在人们失落之时，这个口号会给予他们安慰；在高兴的时候则让人更开心。他们还说这个口号永远不会过时。八卦一下：在想到这个口号之前，还有两个口号备选：“One Yearbook to Rule Them All!”和“Meet the people you thought you knew!”，后来都被否决了。）
Meet the Cooks 库克家族的富翁们
Catherine 凯瑟琳(创办人)
凯瑟琳自称是一名“阿呆”（nerd），并引以为傲。她是大学体育代表队的体操运动员，GPA（平均分，Grade Point Average）4.0分（这可是美国GPA的最高分哦）。在空闲的时间，她会参加美国青年领袖联会的讨论会之类的活动。
作为myYearbook的一名“超级会员”，凯瑟琳一有时间就会上自己的网站走走，获取使用者的经验。她每周工作超过25小时，不时更新、测试网站的功能。
Dave 戴夫(创办人)
戴夫可谓美国幸福少年的典范：他为人幽默，在学校很受欢迎；他喜欢上学，学习成绩优秀，不过比起看书，他宁愿和朋友到星巴克喝东西。在创立
myYearbook之前，他几乎每个晚上都会到家附近的滑雪场滑雪，而不是学习。
现在，戴夫不能再像以前那样经常滑雪了，因为他整天都要监督电脑程序员的工作。这对一名高中生来说不是一件容易的事情，但这是他的计划之一—他打算把myYearbook发展成可以“击败MySpace”的网站。此外，他还肩负着向大学生推广
myYearbook的重任。
Geoff 杰夫(大哥兼投资者)
杰夫是凯瑟琳和戴夫的哥哥，也是网站的投资者。他可是个“怪胎”—在SAT（Scholastic
Aptitude Test）考试中他居然把所有问题都答对了。杰夫后来到了哈佛大学学习，并在宿舍里开办了两家互联网公司。他对myYearbook的发展有极大贡献。
Dusty 德斯蒂(营销副总裁)
库克家的宠物狗德斯蒂今年刚满5岁。它在哈佛接受教育，现在已经当上了myYearbook的营销副总裁。派发免费T恤和皮带都是它的主意。有好几次，德斯蒂都提出比戴夫更好的主意，证明了自己是网站的关键一员，哈哈！
注1：年刊是由中学或大学的毕业班编辑并装订成册的刊物，记录当年的事件，一般还包括学生们和全体教师的照片。
注2：个人履历（Curriculum vitae）。
注3：硅谷是美国加利福尼亚州西部一个地区，位于旧金山东南部，以其高科技设计和生产工业闻名。
Not long after Catherine Cook arrived at her new high school aged 15, she was flipping[翻动书页] through an old yearbook注1 with Dave, her 16-year-old brother, when they spotted the name of a girl they both knew. Yet the yearbook picture looked nothing like her. In that moment an Internet empire was born.
You have heard of Google, MySpace, Facebook and the boy geniuses[天才] who made billions from
brilliant computer ideas. Now meet a girl genius – a New Jersey teenager who turned a stroke of[一次成功的行动]
High School inspiration into what is now the fastest-growing online social network in America.
The website she launched with her brother at Montgomery high school in Skillman, New Jersey,
has exploded into a multi-million-dollar online
business, with 10 million members of myYearbook.com
registering[登记] and 1.5 billion page views a month.
Launched in 2005 with an initial[最初的] investment of $250,000, the site is now earning more than $10
million a year in advertising sales and Cook has
become a millionaire.
Hitwise, the leading Internet monitoring[监测] group, has calculated that in June myYearbook became the third largest online social network in the United States, behind MySpace and Facebook.
“We’ve had some offers from people who want to buy us out – and a few pretty big ones,” Cook said.
“But we’re not interested right now. I’m having too much fun working on the site.”
With their joky[爱开玩笑的] style, Cook and her brother may have dealt a death blow[打击某人] to the rather dreary[沉闷的] school annuals[年刊，年鉴] that in recent years have been read mainly by magazine editors, seeking embarrassing pictures of celebrities[名人].
“I realized when I was talking to Dave that those old yearbooks really sucked[（俚）糟糕],” said Cook, who wears big glasses and admits to being “a bit nerdish[（俚）书呆子的].”
She added: “The pictures always stink[很糟糕的] and the books never really tell you anything about the
person. So we thought: why not put it online? Why not have a profile page that can list your TV interests, the music you like, your extracurriculars[课外活动]?”
Neither Cook nor her brother knew anything about building a website, but family help was at
hand[在手边，即将到来]. Catherine and Dave have an older brother, Geoff, who had already made an Internet
fortune of his own while studying at Harvard University.
Geoff had devised[设计] and sold a pair of websites that helped students with essay writing and preparing CVs注2. He immediately saw the promise[有成功的希望] in his younger siblings’ [兄弟，姐妹] idea. He wrote them a check to get the website off the ground[（事业）顺利开始], and has since become the venture’s[风险事业] chief executive[执行官].
“Geoff is 11 years older than me,” said Cook. “He was running his websites out of Palm Springs, California,
and my mom used to send us out there to stay with him. His office was just so cool, and I knew when I saw it that I didn’t want a proper, typical job. I wanted to be an
entrepreneur[企业家].”
At 15, when most of her schoolmates were shopping at the mall and worrying about boys, Cook was firing off[发出一连串提问] e-mails to a team of website designers in Mumbai.
“It was very helpful to have a close personal
relationship with someone like Geoff,” she said.
“He knows how to hire programmers in India,
lease[租出，租得] server[服务器] space in Texas and start
conversations with venture capitalists in Silicon Valley注3.”
By April 2005 the family was ready to test its new toy. She and Dave turned up at school wearing T-shirts with slogans that read: “Are you the prettiest girl in school? How about the dumbest? Find out at myYearbook.com.”
As teenagers around the country flocked[聚结] to the site, they were followed by investors and advertisers. The site now employs 70 people, and Cook and her brothers may eventually be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Facebook, for example, which is privately
controlled, is estimated[估价] to be worth between $3
billion and $15 billion.
Cook is about to start her second year as a
student at Georgetown University in Washington DC, but she acknowledged[承认] that she was finding it hard to combine her studies with running a budding[开始发展的] website.
“I do want to graduate,” she said. “But I may have to take one or two years off to work on the website first.”
15岁的凯瑟琳·库克来到新高中后不久，有一次，她和16岁的哥哥戴夫在翻看一本旧的学校毕业年刊时，看见一个他们都认识的女孩的名字，然而年刊上的照片却一点也不像她。就在那一刻，一个互联网帝国诞生了。
你也许听过Google、MySpace和Facebook，以及那些通过非同凡响的电脑点子赚到亿万财富的天才少男。那么，现在来见识一位天才少女吧—这位来自（美国）新泽西州的少女将高中时代的灵光一现转变成现在美国增长速度最快的在线社交网络。
她和哥哥在新泽西州斯其尔曼市的蒙哥马利高中创始了这个网站，如今网站已经发展成一门价值数百万美元的网络生意。“myYearbook.com”拥有1000万名注册会员，每月页访问量达到15亿。
这个创建于2005年的网站当初只有25万美元的启动资金，而现在每年光靠销售广告就可以赚取超过1000万美元的利润。库克随之当上了百万富翁。
据领先的互联网监测团体“Hitwise”统计，myYearbook在（今年）6月份成为美国第三大在线社交网络，仅次于MySpace和Facebook。
“有一些人想出资收购我们的网站—其中有些出价相当高，”库克说。
“但我们目前无意这样做。经营这个网站，我忙得不亦乐乎。”
库克和哥哥的幽默风格可能给枯燥乏味的学校年刊带来致命的打击—近年来，这些年刊的主要读者都是一些搜寻名人过往尴尬照片的杂志编辑。
“我在和戴夫聊天时意识到那些年刊有多么差劲，”库克说。她戴着大大的眼镜，承认自己“有点儿呆”。
她又说：“（年刊里的）照片总是拍得很糟糕，而且这本书从来不能让你真正了解一个人。我们便想：为什么不把它放到网上？为什么不做一个个人简介页面，上面可以列出你喜爱的电视节目、音乐、以及课外活动呢？”
虽然库克和她的哥哥对建立网站一窍不通，但家人的帮助唾手可得。凯瑟琳和戴夫有一个哥哥叫杰夫，他在哈佛读大学时就已经为自己赚了一笔网络财。
杰夫曾经设计并售出两个帮助学生写论文和准备个人履历的网站。一听说小弟妹的主意，他就看到了其中蕴藏的商机。他给他们写了一张支票，资助他们启动网站的建设，同时成为这门生意的首席执行官。
“杰夫比我大11岁，”库克说。“他过去在加利福尼亚的棕榈泉经营自己的网站，妈妈经常送我们到他那边玩。他的办公室真是太酷了，我看见之后，就知道自己想要的不是一份循规蹈矩的传统工作，而是当一名企业家。”
15岁时，当其他女生还在商场购物或者整天为男生烦恼时，库克正忙着给一个孟买的网站设计团队发送一连串邮件。
“能和像杰夫这样的人关系密切，真的很有帮助，”她说。
“他知道怎样雇用印度的程序员、在德克萨斯州租赁服务器空间，以及如何联系硅谷的风险资本家。”
到了2005年4月，这个家庭已经准备好测试他们的新玩具。她和戴夫穿着T恤去上学，T恤上面印着这样的口号：“你是学校里最美丽的女孩吗？还是最闷骚的？答案尽在myYearbook.com。”
随着全国各地的青少年蜂拥登录这个网站，这对兄妹也成为投资者和广告商的追逐对象。网站如今聘请了70名员工，而库克和她的哥哥最后的身价可能会超过数百万美元。例如由私人运营的Facebook，据估计其价值达到30至150亿美元。
现在，库克即将开始在华盛顿特区乔治城大学第二年的学习。不过她承认，要做到读书学习和经营网站两不误确实有难度。
“我当然想毕业，”她说。“但我可能不得不先休学一两年，把网站做好再说。”
相关链接
myYearbook网址 http://www.myyearbook.com/
网站口号
“You’ve Got Friends!”（库克兄妹认为在人们失落之时，这个口号会给予他们安慰；在高兴的时候则让人更开心。他们还说这个口号永远不会过时。八卦一下：在想到这个口号之前，还有两个口号备选：“One Yearbook to Rule Them All!”和“Meet the people you thought you knew!”，后来都被否决了。）
Meet the Cooks 库克家族的富翁们
Catherine 凯瑟琳(创办人)
凯瑟琳自称是一名“阿呆”（nerd），并引以为傲。她是大学体育代表队的体操运动员，GPA（平均分，Grade Point Average）4.0分（这可是美国GPA的最高分哦）。在空闲的时间，她会参加美国青年领袖联会的讨论会之类的活动。
作为myYearbook的一名“超级会员”，凯瑟琳一有时间就会上自己的网站走走，获取使用者的经验。她每周工作超过25小时，不时更新、测试网站的功能。
Dave 戴夫(创办人)
戴夫可谓美国幸福少年的典范：他为人幽默，在学校很受欢迎；他喜欢上学，学习成绩优秀，不过比起看书，他宁愿和朋友到星巴克喝东西。在创立
myYearbook之前，他几乎每个晚上都会到家附近的滑雪场滑雪，而不是学习。
现在，戴夫不能再像以前那样经常滑雪了，因为他整天都要监督电脑程序员的工作。这对一名高中生来说不是一件容易的事情，但这是他的计划之一—他打算把myYearbook发展成可以“击败MySpace”的网站。此外，他还肩负着向大学生推广
myYearbook的重任。
Geoff 杰夫(大哥兼投资者)
杰夫是凯瑟琳和戴夫的哥哥，也是网站的投资者。他可是个“怪胎”—在SAT（Scholastic
Aptitude Test）考试中他居然把所有问题都答对了。杰夫后来到了哈佛大学学习，并在宿舍里开办了两家互联网公司。他对myYearbook的发展有极大贡献。
Dusty 德斯蒂(营销副总裁)
库克家的宠物狗德斯蒂今年刚满5岁。它在哈佛接受教育，现在已经当上了myYearbook的营销副总裁。派发免费T恤和皮带都是它的主意。有好几次，德斯蒂都提出比戴夫更好的主意，证明了自己是网站的关键一员，哈哈！
注1：年刊是由中学或大学的毕业班编辑并装订成册的刊物，记录当年的事件，一般还包括学生们和全体教师的照片。
注2：个人履历（Curriculum vitae）。
注3：硅谷是美国加利福尼亚州西部一个地区，位于旧金山东南部，以其高科技设计和生产工业闻名。