In the second half of knowledge payment, who will be the future: JD.com, Tmall or Amazon?

Ever since Luo Zhenyu gave his first lecture titled "Doomsday Superstition and Living Towards Death" on December 21, 2012, a seed called " knowledge payment " has begun to take root among many Luo fans.

Of course, the origin of knowledge payment has long existed:

Looking closer, you can look up at the high prices of school district housing;

A little further back, Confucius required ten pieces of dried meat as a gift when accepting students.
However, many self-media prefer to believe that it was Luoji Siwei that sowed the seeds in its 205th video.

It was not until March 8, 2017 that Luo Zhenyu chose to stop updating the more than 40-minute long video "Luoji Siwei" and started to go all-in on the Dedao APP ; and on May 8, 2017, Luo Zhenyu even stopped updating the 60-second voice clips of "Luoji Siwei" that he had maintained for 1,600 days.
At this point, the original form of "Luoji Siwei" has been completely "shattered".

After Luo Zhenyu " hatched " the App, he finally chose to kill it himself, or "euthanize" "Luoji Siwei".

After that, on May 18, two days before the 520 Internet Valentine's Day , Luo Zhenyu started to stir things up again after the Papi Jiang auction and Luo Yonghao's long talk - he got the "001 Knowledge Product Release Conference":

This special press conference lasted nearly two hours.

The 12 knowledge products released include 7 "subscription columns", 2 "knowledge projects", 1 collection album "Art Museum", 1 content product called "Zeng Ming·Twenty Lectures on Smart Business", and 1 free and open source shared "Get Quality Control Manual".

In addition, Luo Zhenyu also announced that the second season of "Li Xiang's Business Insider" will be officially renamed "Li Xiang's Knowledge Insider" and will be open to users for free. It will be launched at the end of the month, and the creator himself, Li Xiang, will officially join the company as editor-in-chief.
Moreover, on May 17, the day before Luo Zhenyu’s “eloquent speech”, some major events that can only be understood but not expressed in words occurred in the field of knowledge payment:

On May 17, in the latest update of Zhihu App, Zhihu made adjustments to its product strategy. After the implementation of "seven-day no-reason refund" on Zhihu Live , a top-level independent entrance named "Market" was added to the Zhihu Tab column, claiming to be the Amazon of the knowledge market.
On May 17, Fenda launched a "paid community". The first community launched by the product was "Rationalists in the Workplace", which focused on helping newcomers in the workplace "use rational logic to achieve career advancement" and was priced at 99 yuan per half year.
On May 17, WeChat launched the “WeChat Lab” and put the “Search” and “Look” functions on the discovery page, intending to “block half of China’s Internet with its own strength.”
In this regard, there are two main voices in the field of knowledge payment:

First: Under WeChat’s “blind expansion”, the Internet’s content traffic portals will accelerate differentiation and integration, leading to the next round of destructive reshuffle;

Second: Under the big pit dug by Luo Zhenyu, knowledge payment platforms are accelerating their " e-commerce ";
At this point, knowledge payment has entered the second half of "e-commerce dominance".

In the "2017 Knowledge Paid Product Ranking" released by "Internet Weekly", Duode, Fenda, Zhihu and Ximalaya are all in the top six.

This time, the "May Revolution" of Duoduo, Fenda and Zhihu can almost reflect the top trend of the entire market.

Get - JD.com - Pay tribute to lifelong learners In fact, as early as the end of February 2017, Luo Zhenyu mentioned in an article in iHeima , "Luo Zhenyu: Three "pits" I dug for the industry":

The first pitfall: living like a USB flash drive;

The second “pitfall”: community ;

The third pitfall: content e-commerce;
Luo Zhenyu himself has also been driving the development of the entire knowledge payment market and was once called the "spiritual godfather" of the knowledge payment market.

Of course, in order to find a new way out for "Luoji Siwei", Luo Zhenyu found a new partner "Tuo Buhua" and its commercialization became more and more serious. It deviated from the direction of "personality self-media" that Shen Yin had created for Luo Zhenyu before 2015, and began to downplay his personal image. This led to the possibility of the two Luos' "Long Talk" and "001 is Just a Press Conference".

As for the business model , no matter whether it is the 23 columnists that Luo Zhenyu has "recruited" so far, or "Luoji Siwei" for which Luo Zhenyu charges a symbolic fee of 0.1 yuan, or "Li Xiang Knowledge Insider" which will soon be free, all the content seems to be provided by the columnists, but it still needs to be checked by the App in the early stage.

Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say that the content of the Dedao App is "self-operated".

Himalaya - Tmall - listen and see the truth. In the field of Himalaya, it officially entered the field of paid knowledge through the 123 Knowledge Carnival in 2016.

Moreover, Himalaya has always been low-key. It has the largest fan base among the top four knowledge payment platforms (Dedao, Fenda, Zhihu, and Himalaya), and it is the only knowledge payment platform that tends to be emotional and entertaining. Its advantages can be said to be unique.

Although how to "motivate" a large number of fans to pay is a difficult problem?

However, after cultivating the paid reading habits through Fenda, Duoduo and Zhihu, Himalaya does not really need to "educate" the entire market again; it only needs to attract more paying users and mobilize more fans to pay for the anchors out of interest.

Therefore, Himalaya has always been the most low-key among the four major platforms. When Fenda, Zhihu and Duoduo were still racking their brains for how to become "knowledge e-commerce", Himalaya had already become one of "Tmall" during the 123 Knowledge Carnival at the end of last year.

Himalaya only serves as a platform to encourage third-party content creators to enter, and it only manages the entire content market and occasionally carries out promotional activities.

Zhihu - Amazon - wants to sell all knowledge and experience
On May 17, in the latest updated version of Zhihu App, Zhihu made strategic adjustments to its product and added a top-level independent entrance called "Market" in the Tab bar.

In this regard, Li Shenshen, the person in charge of Zhihu Live and co-founder of Zhihu, said:

“Amazon wants to sell everything, and Zhihu wants to sell all knowledge and experience. Why can’t they do that?”
This means that Zhihu, which has suffered from the difficulties of commercial monetization for many years, has finally transformed itself into " Douban "; in addition to advertising, Zhihu has taken advantage of the trend of knowledge payment and added a "new" business model.

There is nothing wrong with Zhihu suddenly jumping out, leaving a gap in the phrase "just a market", and claiming that it wants to be the knowledge and experience version of Amazon; it can even be regarded as the "most perfect" destination for Zhihu and its users.

After all, Zhihu, as a "slow company", has been constrained by "commercialization" over the years; it was even slapped in the face by Douban several times on its transformation path (Douban Books, Douban Film Reviews). This time, it finally caught up with the explosion of knowledge payment, and Zhihu Live was also launched on May 14, 2016. However, due to issues such as user experience, content direction and publicity strategy, it was once overshadowed by Fenda, Duoduo and Himalaya.

It was not until the announcement of "seven-day no-questions-asked refund" on April 26, 2017, which stirred up a lot of trouble, that it was finally "taken seriously" by many self-media people.

The knowledge market that opened on May 17 might have been worth watching if Luo Zhenyu's "001 Knowledge Product Launch Conference" hadn't "showed off".

After all, in the field of knowledge and experience, Zhihu has always been "pure and well-established" and "a unique one".

In fact, it is still a question whether there is a so-called "trend" in the first half of knowledge payment?

I thought the biggest landmark events in the first half were just:

Fenda was valued at $100 million 43 days after its launch in June last year;
"Li Xiang's Business Insider" sold 2 million copies in one day;
Himalaya launches 123 Knowledge Carnival.
Finally, it is probably Zhihu's killer feature of "seven-day no-reason refund" and the fact that the subscription of Wan Weigang's "Elite Daily Course" on the Duoduo App has exceeded 100,000.

Compared with the sharing economy , which is worth tens of billions of dollars, knowledge payment should be considered a "small matter"!

So, what should we do and imagine for the second half of knowledge payment that is about to begin?

First of all: The reason why Fenda’s launch of the “knowledge community” was not taken seriously is mainly because no matter how Fenda “struggles”, on the one hand, it has no hope of breaking through the ceiling of “WeChat payment” (even if it is just a pseudo-concept), and on the other hand, it is completely stuck in Luo Zhenyu’s “pit”;
In addition, its fate as a hit product is weakening its core competitiveness, and now it has not found its own irreplaceability, so its future is predictable;
Secondly: In the new media era, no matter how much users hate Luo Zhenyu's ability to "make trouble", the Dedao App has really attracted enough attention, and he has attracted too many loyal paying users from the beginning with the concept of "paid boutique";
On the other hand, I don’t know what Zhihu is doing! As the legitimate “bloodline” of paid knowledge, it has always been out of the sight of users;
Finally: Himalaya, which has always pursued the policy of "making a fortune in silence", is trying live streaming , based on topical content formats (such as the previously popular Ma Dong team and the Super Brain team, both left their mark on Himalaya).
Therefore, in Feng Shao’s opinion, the second half of knowledge payment will be dominated by either JD.com or Tmall. Amazon is “naturally arrogant” and is not very suitable for “generating fever” for users.

In the battle between Tmall and JD.com, JD.com has been running around and "making trouble" again and again; on the other hand, Tmall has been sitting back and waiting, watching the fight between two tigers. It will either explode in silence or perish in silence.

Therefore, what Dedao ultimately relies on is Luo Zhenyu’s ability to “make things happen”, and what Himalaya ultimately relies on is whether his “steadiness and understanding” can reach a breakthrough.

So, what about you? What do you think?

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