Zhihu Operation: Will “Circles” help Zhihu users find a sense of belonging?

On the one hand, the professionalism of "If you have any questions, go to Zhihu" has been dethroned by the huge influx of users, and has become a joke like "I just got off a plane in the United States." On the other hand, popular content has also failed to achieve a good classification and content production model, making it difficult for users to find a unique sense of belonging and increase stickiness.

What the circle achieves is perhaps to allow different users to divert and live in peace.

Recently, many in-depth Zhihu users have received private message invitations from Zhihu institutional accounts, inviting them to participate in the internal testing of a new feature called "Zhihu Circles".

The official account of Zhihu Circle published a post mentioning the definition of "What is Zhihu Circle":

"In the large Zhihu community, there are many people with the same interests and characteristics. Circles provide these users with a more centralized and relaxed communication and interaction environment in the form of small groups."

Before inviting users to the internal test, Zhihu had actually quietly launched the circle function in the APP several months ago, but without any public promotion. The large-scale release of this internal testing information can be seen as the circle function having a prototype and an initial user base. Through actual use, we found that there are already classifications such as celebrities, interests, industries, campus, emotions, and games, and the sections are relatively complete.

Judging from the layout of Zhihu Circle Square, it is basically the same as Weibo's Super Topic Community and similar to Baidu Tieba:

Whether it is the keywords such as "concentration" and "relaxation" mentioned in Zhihu's official positioning of circles, or the actual product logic of experience, circles are a product segment that is relatively independent of Zhihu itself, and has some similarities with content communities such as Weibo Super Topic and Douban Group.

This low-threshold content format has a fairly wide audience range, and the “circle” function may carry considerable expectations for the platform .

However, there are already more than one content communities like this. From Tieba to Weibo super topics, Douban groups, and Hupu forums, each has its own signature community characteristics and user base. Can the newly entered Zhihu circle establish its own advantages?

1. From Tieba to Chaohu, the opponents in Zhihu circle are quite strong

Baidu Tieba, Weibo Super Topic, Douban Group, Hupu Forum, many of the community platforms we are familiar with have interest-based "circle" style operations. Some of them are confined to a corner and have great influence in one or two fields; some have become battlefields for celebrity marketing; some started early but failed to maintain their advantage.

Over the past many years, Baidu Tieba has almost become a "PC Internet Museum" - for almost any category in any field, you can find corresponding high-quality online content in Tieba, based on the Tieba order established by folk masters, including games, novels, culture, regions... From astronomy, geography and national affairs to student forums for junior and high schools, Tieba covers almost everything.

But recently, the biggest Tieba event we know about was the announcement in May this year that "posts before 2017 are temporarily inaccessible", which made netizens sigh.

Baidu Tieba has the highest starting point and currently has a huge user scale. However, due to various changes and lagging behind in the mobile Internet era, it is now difficult to see new vitality.

Weibo Super Topic may have become the most important place for fan groups on Weibo to interact and communicate. Under the operation of Weibo, almost all related activities, such as fans obtaining information about idols, daily interactions and likes, organization and disclosure of key events, interaction between stars and fans, star endorsements and commercial activities, etc., can be concentrated on Weibo Super Topic.

Weibo Super Topic is based on the binding of Weibo and celebrity social accounts, and is a communication platform for celebrities and fan organizations.

In the current Internet environment, Weibo super topics have almost become an irreplaceable existence for fan circles. Just like Jay Chou’s “top ranking incident” a while ago, a star who does not have a Weibo account, his fans gathered together to participate in the super topic ranking. Behind the fan carnival and media communication effect, it is actually the victory of Weibo super topic itself in the fan economy.

Yang Chaoyue's Zhihu circle and Weibo super topic

Douban groups are quite special.

On the one hand, the popularity of the "Eight Groups" has made Douban Groups a well-known entertainment circle melon field, known as "feeding many entertainment marketing accounts"; but from the broader characteristics of other Douban Groups, it is still a highly vertical interest discussion community based on books, movies, music and life, and is relatively closed - many influential groups have an "application-review" access mechanism.

In the field of film, television and variety shows, groups have become one of the components of Douban's rating page, and have therefore become an important place for entertainment marketing. This may be one of the future development directions of the Zhihu circle.

The current characteristics of Zhihu circles are similar to those of Douban groups, Tieba, and Weibo. As for whether it is competing with other platforms, it is difficult to see any clues from the current small scale of the Zhihu circle.

However, the scope of Zhihu's question-and-answer platform itself is all-encompassing, and circles can at least cater to users' more social needs and meet the user needs beyond questions and answers and articles.

2. Zhihu, with 200 million users, needs to find a way to keep users from getting lost

Why does Zhihu need circles?

As we all know, the discussion about the content quality of Zhihu has never been settled in the past few years.

In its early days, Zhihu was an invitation-based high-end question-and-answer community. In December 2018, Zhihu announced that its user base had exceeded 220 million, a year-on-year increase of 102%; the number of its questions exceeded 30 million, and the number of answers exceeded 130 million.

During the 2018 World Cup, Zhihu's first spokesperson Liu Haoran also kept making his presence felt with brainwashing ads - "Do you know? Do you really know? Are you sure you know? Are you really sure you know? If you have any questions, go to Zhihu!"

After a year of rapid expansion with the number of users doubling, Zhihu is facing at least one problem in terms of content and user operations: whether for content producers or content consumers, the existing Zhihu cannot meet the needs of every user for content and platform experience.

For users who prefer to see professional, high-threshold content, the large influx of new user groups will inevitably bring content that does not meet the needs of traditional Zhihu users, such as the targeted content production of entertainment marketing accounts. However, answers based on the number of likes, article sections and intelligent recommendation distribution are difficult to truly complete the screening of content quality.

From another perspective, many users who come to Zhihu to follow celebrities and entertainment topics may not necessarily have a good experience on Zhihu. Although Zhihu has long been criticized for its watered-down content, objectively speaking it is still one of the largest high-quality information content platforms on the Chinese Internet, gathering a large amount of content with certain requirements and high-level users. Many discussions on entertainment topics are actually quite complex.

Excluding circles, Zhihu's content sections can currently be divided into several categories, including questions and answers, articles, ideas, Yanxuan columns, live, e-books, etc. The Yanxuan column, live, and e-books based on the membership payment system are one of the commercialization directions of Zhihu. The idea function has been almost shelved, and ordinary content output still mainly comes from questions and answers and articles. There is still a content production threshold for both to gain popularity.

In other words, what at least some new users need is a Zhihu where everyone can participate in discussions and can accommodate more "watery" content than the current one.

Therefore, the problem is that on the one hand, the professionalism of "If you have any questions, go to Zhihu" has been dethroned by the huge influx of users, and has become a joke of "I just got off the plane in the United States"; on the other hand, the popular content has not been well classified and produced, making it difficult for users to find a unique sense of belonging and improve stickiness.

Looking back at the "semi-closed interest circle" feature of the "Circle" function, the author believes that it is indeed very valuable to Zhihu.

Simply put, it is to allow different users to find their own user experience, guide and divert them, and reduce the cost of users getting "lost" in the ocean of content - consolidate and rebuild the once truly "high-end" Zhihu, and regain the relatively serious and knowledge-based characteristics of the brand platform. At the same time, it will enhance the stickiness of the large number of users who have poured in over the past few years, so that users who are interested in social needs also have a place to belong.

Just like the mutual connection and peaceful coexistence of Douban groups and the book, movie and music sections, in the face of the problem of declining content quality brought about by the expansion of user scale, this kind of content operation in niche areas is something that almost all platforms have to do - after all, whether it is the algorithm-recommended distribution model or the circle function based on interests and hobbies, it is all to provide every user with an experience that feels comfortable.

As for commercial considerations, there may also be a certain impact.

Zhihu's commercialization can be roughly divided into paid membership and information flow advertising. Users who frequently use Zhihu should be able to discover the changes in Zhihu advertising. Nowadays, more and more advertisements are hidden in the recommended information flow in the form of questions and answers. This model that combines traffic monetization with platform characteristics may be the most important component of Zhihu's commercialization.

If the "Circle" function can consolidate the existing user traffic, it is believed that it will also have a positive effect on information flow advertising.

In 2012, Zhihu CEO Zhou Yuan wrote in response to a question about Zhihu’s original intention:

Now, many years later, these words seem to have given rise to more definitional puzzles - how do we define "experts", "high quality" and "valuable information"?

Perhaps one thing that remains unchanged is that when a platform is large enough and has enough users, the characteristics of the platform will become a microcosm of the characteristics of society as a whole, and Zhihu is probably no exception.

Author: Xiaoduyuer

Official account: Duyu (ID: yiqiduyu)