Zhihu product analysis report!

Preface

As Internet traffic has peaked, new traffic dividends have become increasingly scarce, and Internet companies have entered a stage of competing for the existing market. However, in this era where traffic means everything, the scramble for and protection of traffic has become increasingly fierce and bloody. In recent years, content community has undoubtedly been the most eye-catching area.

Even though the “two Weibo and one Douyin” pattern has been formed, a large number of mid-tier and tail companies have not given up and frequently launched tests in the content community field. Zhihu and the knowledge community it represents are also attracting more and more attention from the public.

Zhihu is undoubtedly the brightest star in the knowledge community. Relying on years of accumulated users and content, it has withstood the challenges from a number of latecomers such as ByteDance's Wukong, Weibo's Q&A, and Guokr's Fenda, and still sits firmly at the top of the knowledge Q&A field.

However, in the era of the eyeball economy, user time is always limited. In addition to visible competitors in the knowledge field, invisible competitors outside the field are also competing for users' attention. If Zhihu wants to become the fourth pole after the “two Weibo and one Douyin”, it has to extend the boundaries of competition outward. For example, Hupu represents the male-oriented exercise community, and Dudu represents the sneaker community. Judging from the current development status and future potential, Bilibili is the most likely to seize Zhihu's user base, and Bilibili is also the most capable competitor to compete with Zhihu.

Fierce community competition

According to Bilibili's 2019 financial report, the number of monthly active users in Q4 exceeded 130 million, of which 116 million were mobile users, a year-on-year increase of 40% and 46% respectively. The average monthly paying users in Q4 was 8.8 million, a year-on-year increase of 100%. The number of daily active users reached 37.9 million, a year-on-year increase of 41%, and the average daily usage time of users reached 77 minutes. Q4 revenue exceeded 2.01 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 74%. Exceeding expectations for seven consecutive quarters. The eye-catching performance and data have undoubtedly greatly boosted investors' confidence.

The recent “Hou Lang” video that went viral on WeChat Moments is a test for Bilibili to go beyond its circle of friends. "The Next Wave" was launched on the May Fourth Youth Day, aiming to pay tribute to this generation of young people and affirm the responsibilities and contributions they have shouldered to society.

Although it caused strong controversy among the "younger generation", many of them said they did not want to be represented. However, unexpectedly, Bilibili resonated with the "old wave" and successfully broke into the circle of middle-aged people. So much so that some people speculated that "Houlang" was originally intended to be a marketing campaign targeting middle-aged people.

Bilibili 2019 Q4 and full-year financial report

In contrast, Zhihu has stopped disclosing user data to the public since 2019, and we can only get a glimpse of it from the data disclosed previously. In 2018, the number of users was 220 million, with 48.65 million monthly active users, 10 million daily active users, and an average daily usage time of 27 minutes. Even taking into account the growth in 2019, there is still a big gap compared to Bilibili. Judging from data comparison and social influence, Bilibili seems to have surpassed Zhihu.

However, business is never a simple comparison of data. Business model and development potential are the decisive factors that determine how far a platform can go. Bilibili has gradually transformed from a two-dimensional community. In the past, games and animation almost each accounted for half of the market, but now it is divided into culture, entertainment, and social networking. Many netizens learn a wide range of knowledge on Bilibili, including law, economics, technology, examinations and other fields. Unknowingly, Bilibili has extended its boundaries into the field of knowledge community, forming a competitive landscape with Zhihu in the knowledge sector. 95% of the content on Bilibili is in video format.

The fields covered by Zhihu are gradually expanding, but its main battlefield has always been the knowledge community. Although real-time information has been introduced in the question-and-answer section, and topics such as games, video, and e-commerce have been introduced in live broadcasts, their presence is weak and they cannot pose a threat to Bilibili. Zhihu's main content is in the form of pictures and texts.

In comparison, the field that Bilibili is targeting is more popular and naturally easier to attract the general public. Zhihu, which focuses on the field of knowledge, has a sense of loneliness because its content is too high-brow and not widely understood. In terms of content form, videos are richer in expression and more appealing, and they are also more advantageous in attracting user time than clumsy graphic and text content. Therefore, it is easy to understand why Bilibili has an advantage over Zhihu in terms of data.

In the age of information video, even knowledge has begun to have the trend of video, which seems to make learning easier and more acceptable. But everyone has gradually realized that although the process of learning text is difficult, it is the most suitable scenario for thinking and deep understanding. Moreover, text can convey much more information than video in a unit of time. The knowledge accumulated has reached nearly 20 million questions and 80 million answers. This profound textual heritage has built the deepest moat of Zhihu, and this wealth will gradually realize its value in the future.

The past of Zhihu and the success of the knowledge community

From its inception to now, Zhihu has received seven consecutive rounds of financing. Even though it stopped disclosing user data from 2019, Zhihu received investments from Kuaishou and Baidu in August, which indirectly shows that Zhihu's business model and core data are still favored by investors. Zhihu’s latest valuation is US$3.5 billion, which cannot be considered an incredible performance in the Internet industry, but it is also an excellent report card. It is recognized in the industry as China’s largest and best knowledge platform.

The most important reason why Zhihu has been successful in the past is that the Zhihu team has explored the knowledge community model and found several elements that allow the community to grow and develop, which reinforce each other and form a lollapalooza effect.

Zhou Yuan once said: "An excellent company does not think around a positioning, but around a user scenario; Zhihu not only provides tools, but also builds a community, and does not only Q&A, but also search and reading."

From here, it is not difficult to see several core elements of the Zhihu community: providing efficient and low-threshold question-and-answer tools; building a community model, formulating community rules, and cultivating a community tone; doing a good job of vertical search within the platform, and expanding to searches across the entire network in the future. Undoubtedly, Zhihu has done a good job in these aspects so far.

Zhihu's development history

To predict a company's future, you have to understand its past and present.

On January 26, 2011, Zhihu went online; in March, it received angel round investment from Kai-Fu Lee. In the early days, Zhihu used an invitation system, and some of its users were well-known Internet celebrities, including Kai-Fu Lee, Lei Jun, Keso, and Cai Tou. Another part of users are important figures in various fields. In short, those who can be invited to Zhihu are all IP figures who have made achievements in various fields or have proven themselves.

The founding team members Zhou Yuan, Li Shenshen, and Huang Jixin met and got to know each other on the forum APPLE4us and were among the earliest users of Internet forums. The genes of the founding team and a group of highly educated people laid the tone for the Zhihu community - professional, serious and friendly knowledge sharing.

In January 2012, it received a US$10 million Series A investment from Qiming Venture Partners. Attracted by the atmosphere of Zhihu, a large number of elite users from various fields such as law and medicine have flocked to it. It was also during this period that the image of many big Vs on Zhihu became deeply rooted in people's minds.

The website opened its registration form in early March 2013, and a large number of users flocked to Zhihu. This was a very controversial matter at the time, and it was the atmosphere of the niche elite that attracted a group of big Vs. The result of the explosive increase in users is that user levels are uneven, the platform atmosphere has deteriorated, and the quality of content has declined. The earliest batch of users gradually left Zhihu, and the "Zhihu Pill" rhetoric became rampant.

In June 2014, Zhihu completed a US$22 million Series B financing round led by Softbank China Venture Capital.

On November 8, 2015, it raised US$55 million in Series C funding from new investors including Tencent and Sogou, with Tencent leading the investment. Previous investors SAIF, Qiming Venture Partners and Sinovation Ventures also followed suit in this round.

In April 2016 (also known as the first year of knowledge payment in China), Zhihu launched the "Zhihu" function. Zhihu has resolutely embarked on the path of commercial monetization of paid knowledge. This is another controversial move, with some criticizing it and others supporting it.

In January 2017, Zhihu announced the completion of a USD 100 million Series D financing round, with investors including Capital Today, and existing directors and shareholders including Tencent, Sogou, SAIF, Qiming, and Sinovation Ventures following suit.

In August 2017, Toutiao poached 300 big Vs from Zhihu in a high-profile manner, directly declaring war on Zhihu. The Zhihu crisis theory is becoming popular again.

On August 8, 2018, Zhihu announced the completion of a US$270 million Series E financing round. The investors were not announced, the financing amount was close to US$300 million, and the valuation of this round was close to US$2.5 billion.

On August 12, 2019, according to 36Kr, Zhihu has completed approximately US$450 million in Series F financing. This round of financing was jointly strategically invested by Kuaishou and Baidu.

Zhihu’s Financing History

Looking at Zhihu's development history, it has been full of crises, and almost every major move has attracted countless controversies. The biggest controversies are undoubtedly concentrated in two aspects: the transition from niche to mainstream, and the commercialization process. Despite the ridicule and doubts, Zhihu was resolute in its choice, overcoming many important hurdles and growing to a height that most companies cannot reach.

Question and answer tool

After content is produced on the platform, it needs to go through distribution channels and media to reach users in need for consumption; after consumption, users will interact with the content based on their feelings, thereby further increasing the value of the content product. Production, dissemination, consumption, and value-added, this series of actions is very complex. How to design a supply and marketing mechanism to effectively connect content with people is the core pain point, which requires the platform to provide a set of tools and operating mechanisms to solve it.

In order to build the content ecology of the platform, it is necessary to cover a wide range of topics and attract people of different levels and groups. At the same time, the quality of the content must be guaranteed so that users can benefit from the platform content, and the platform needs to have sufficient stickiness to excellent creators. This requires the platform to solve several problems: attract a wider user group; the technical threshold for content production must be low enough; ensure the quality of platform content; enable people to find content or content to find people accurately; and stimulate user enthusiasm for interaction.

Attract a wider user base:

The platform needs to aggregate people from different levels and groups in order to continuously generate new questions and new content. This is the basic logic for the platform's survival and development. Zhihu encourages every individual to share knowledge, experience, insights and judgment that have never been shared in their brains. As long as you are a registered user, you can answer questions that interest you, share your insights and express your personal thoughts. Even if it is just one person's opinion, the platform will accept it with a tolerant attitude.

If users are interested in a certain field and there are no related topics on the platform, users can also freely create topics and ask questions or express their opinions here. This space for free expression is inherently charming and can attract a large number of "knowledgeable people".

The technical threshold for content production must be low enough:

Content production tools should provide motivation rather than hindrance. During the content production process, platform tools provide careful step-by-step guidance to assist creators in creating better content, greatly reducing the technical threshold for content production. The platform provides a wealth of graphic, text and video editing tools, allowing creators to edit content according to their own creativity through simple operations. At the same time, it can also ensure rich content expression, making it easier for creators to express themselves better.

Ensure the quality of platform content:

After low-quality content is created, it cannot cause harm to the platform. However, after low-quality content is promoted and disseminated through the platform distribution logic, the harm to users and the platform will be amplified exponentially. Therefore, content quality is the lifeline of the platform and cannot be crossed.

The first way to improve content quality is to incentivize the production of high-quality content.

Zhihu has launched a salt value evaluation system, which scores users based on five dimensions: basic credit, content creation, friendly interaction, compliance with conventions, and community building. The higher the salt value, the higher the contribution. After users reach a certain score, they can unlock the corresponding functions on the platform. This is similar to the monster-killing and leveling-up system in games, which provides users with real-time feedback and incentives, stimulating their endless enthusiasm and motivation.

High-quality content has the opportunity to be included in the Zhihu column, thus getting more recommendations and exposure opportunities. This is also a form of attracting traffic to creators.

The second way to improve content quality is to rely on strict risk control to crack down on low-quality content.

Illegal content such as repetitive or sensitive content is very harmful to users and platforms, so strong content risk control is required, which will inevitably result in heavy operating costs. In order to minimize labor costs and improve publishing efficiency, Zhihu launched a hybrid review mode, which is a review method that combines AI identification and manual identification to complement each other. Zhihu has invested heavily in building the Wukong and Waleng risk control systems. All content posted on the platform will first be filtered by AI, and only approved or controversial content will be transferred to the manual review stage.

However, low-quality content not only includes illegal content, but also a considerable amount of meaningless content, such as witty jokes, fabrications, and argumentativeness. Because of the blurred boundaries, these contents are more difficult to identify, which greatly affects the user experience and dampens the enthusiasm of serious creators.

However, the platform has not done a good job in controlling this area. In fact, for the control of this part, it can refer to Bilibili and set up a reporting system and a management committee, which will filter and submit to the platform for final review. The mechanism is simple and clear, and the effect is good. But Zhihu has been slow to take action. The longer it delays, the greater the loss of user experience and enthusiasm.

Accurately let people find content or let content find people:

For content platforms, the connection between content and people is the most important. From the most primitive needs, its importance should exceed the connection between people. Zhihu provides a very rich means of connection.

• 1. Push based on attention relationship, including attention to people/issues/topics. In particular, the attention mechanism for issues transforms information from isolated nodes into a connection center, radiating to all users who care about the issue and bringing them together.
• Second, push based on the recommendation mechanism. The recommendation mechanism enables accurate content search for people, whether it is the question and answer and comment push on the recommendation page, or the question push in the messaging system.
• Third, based on the precise search of the search system within the platform, people can find content.
• Fourth, based on the invitation-to-answer mechanism, we can leverage the power of users to achieve content-based search for people.
• 5. The display of hot topics based on the hot list allows users to browse in a relatively relaxed state and slowly select the content they like.
• 6. Based on random question cards, people can find content in an interesting way.

It is through such a complex and rigorous system that the connection between content and people is ensured and the continuous relationship between content and people is maintained.

Stimulate user enthusiasm for interaction:

Zhihu has designed a complete set of weighting, recommendation and sorting mechanisms for content. The more interactive content you get (including likes, dislikes, likes, favorites, comments, shares, etc.), the higher the score weight you can get, and thus get more recommendations; in sorting, highly weighted comments will also be pushed to the top of all answers, thereby gaining more exposure. This weighted mechanism is effective in stimulating user enthusiasm for interaction. However, the defects of the mechanism itself make the tool more and more biased.

Under the influence of this series of mutually superimposed mechanisms, popular entertainment topics, such as emotions, celebrities, beauties, etc., can easily become hot topics; in contrast, niche serious topics, such as automatic control and mechanical industry, are neglected due to their small audience and difficult knowledge. But often, these difficult texts condense the essence of countless human beings and truly represent the inheritance of knowledge wealth. However, because "it's hard to find a soulmate", the excellent works that the creators have worked hard to write are ignored, and the works are buried in the dust.

This unbalanced mechanism will, on the one hand, dampen the enthusiasm of creators, and on the other hand, make it difficult for ordinary users to receive this type of “long-tail” niche information.

In fact, the audience of content is inherently unbalanced, and different weights should be designed for different categories of topics to achieve true fairness in content distribution.

Overall, although there are some shortcomings, Zhihu has done well in these five aspects. While one mechanism can produce good results on its own, the combination of five mechanisms will reinforce each other and produce a lollapalooza effect.

Knowledge Community

Platform tools are infrastructure construction, while community culture determines Zhihu's upper spiritual civilization. Zhihu's definition of itself: Zhihu is the largest knowledge social platform on the Chinese Internet, with a unique atmosphere of seriousness, professionalism and friendliness, connecting elites from all walks of life. Users share each other's expertise, experience and insights, providing a steady stream of high-quality information to the Chinese Internet.

Although Zhihu defines itself as a knowledge social platform, the social functions it can actually achieve are relatively weak. Both in form and in underlying logic, it is more inclined towards a community. What is a community? See Wikipedia's explanation - a social unit that is brought together by people who share common values ​​or culture, live in the same area, and the resulting interactions.

For a knowledge community, the three most important elements are: attracting people with common values ​​or culture; continuously producing good content, questions and answers; and managing and guiding users and content.

Assimilate people with common values ​​or culture:

Zhihu's founding team and early group of highly educated users shaped the tone of the community - a serious, professional and friendly community atmosphere; as well as the core values ​​of the community - users sharing each other's expertise, experience and insights. Users carefully edit constructive questions, and creators answer every question with sincerity. At that time, the big guys often went to Zhihu to answer questions. For example, there was a question "Which companies has Lei Jun invested in?" which was answered by Lei Jun himself.

Which companies has Lei Jun invested in?

Once the tone and values ​​of the community are established, they need to be maintained jointly by the platform and users. Zhihu provides basic tools and creates the prerequisites for interaction, but what really brings so many people together are softer things.

Without Zhihu, it would be hard to find a knowledge website of such high value on the Chinese Internet. Creators have accumulated a large number of loyal fans on Zhihu. Once they leave Zhihu, it will be difficult to find such a group of fans with Zhihu characteristics on other platforms. Zhihu encourages sharing and advocates an atmosphere of free creation, which is a paradise for creators.

Almost every time Zhihu undergoes a major change, a large number of creators leave, but at the same time a large number of creators flock in. This is an iterative process. People often joke that "Zhihu is permanent, but the big Vs come and go." Although it has undergone many changes and has many competitors eyeing it, Zhihu still maintains its unique charm.

Good questions have their own value:

There is a controversial view that asking a good question is more valuable than finding a good answer. Regardless of whether this view is correct or not. But a good question does have its own value. It can inspire thinking and imagination of the future, just like knocking a crack in the dark chaos. Although no light is seen, it has brought hope. There is no standard for good questions and they can cross boundaries.

It can be a serious exchange of learning skills. For example, "Skills that product managers must master" and "How to quickly improve spoken English." This is the learner's desire to break through the obstacles to progress. This is the most common question on the platform, but the valuable answer is like a lighthouse that appears and disappears in the distance in the vast ocean, pointing out a vague direction for the long-traveling crew to work towards.

It can be an interesting conversation, where Zhou Yuan himself wrote down the answer to the question "How did the name Zhihu come from?" After reading it, I deeply feel fortunate that I am not a Zhihu user; nor am I a Zhihu user; but Zhihu, which is concise, implicit, and full of the oriental poetic beauty.

How did the name Zhihu come about?

It can be a serious reflection and exploration of the future. In May 2012, Zhang Xiaolong asked on Zhihu: "Will mobile phones replace computers? If so, in how many years? In what form?"

At present, the penetration rate of mobile phones in the Internet has reached 90%, far exceeding the number of WEB Internet users. Looking back eight years later, 2011 is called the first year of mobile Internet. Caught in the tide, how many once glorious enterprises have risen and fallen, and how many well-known entrepreneurs have been lost in the tide. However, Zhang Xiaolong was able to keenly sense the breath of change in the times and asked questions that seem thought-provoking today. It is no wonder that Keta can create a great product like WeChat that revolutionizes the era.

In October 2018, Ma Huateng asked a question on Zhihu: "What basic scientific breakthroughs will affect the Internet technology industry in the next decade? What changes will the integration and innovation of industrial Internet and consumer Internet bring?" The times have not yet told us the answers, but the pioneers have already set out to explore.

There is no standard for good questions, but the criterion for measuring good questions is the thoughts and values ​​reflected behind the questions.

A good answer is to maximize the value of individual knowledge:

Since 2016, knowledge payment platforms have sprung up like mushrooms after a rain. However, for users, the common granting-based learning feels a bit superficial, while the questioning-based learning hits the pain point and makes people feel very excited.

Although the overall quality of Zhihu answers has indeed declined in recent years, there is still no shortage of excellent creators. They are willing to selflessly share the most essential parts of their personal knowledge, often writing articles of tens of thousands of words, with extensive citations and witty remarks that make people applaud while reading. When individuals write knowledge on the Internet platform, the value of knowledge is infinitely magnified and has the power to transcend time and space, allowing more people to share the feast regardless of time and place.

I once searched on Zhihu for work needs: "What are the experiences and tips for improving English listening?"

The answer from Wei Jianfeng shocked me greatly. He not only explained in detail the complete set of learning methods and auxiliary materials, but also completely changed my understanding of English learning from the perspective of language knowledge system and thinking framework. The most concise summary is "You can only understand what you can read." Based on several methods collected on Zhihu, I summarized and refined a set of my own methods. Within half a year, my English level leaped forward by two levels.

You can always find the knowledge you need on Zhihu

For two individuals with similar experiences and experiences, the result of the collision of ideas is not simply 1+1=2, it may be 3, it may be 4, or it may be 100. Zhihu does provide users with the best platform for the exchange of ideas.

We need to be vigilant against factors that undermine the community atmosphere

In recent years, the tone of Zhihu's platform has quietly changed. The proportion of serious and professional content has dropped sharply, and entertainment and borderline content has flooded the entire platform.

The platform generates a large number of duplicate questions, resulting in a large number of questions being ignored, which confuses users when they search and affects their ability to find truly valuable questions. A large number of users who want to attract attention and take advantage of hot topics post questions about advertisements, phishing posts, and instant information on the platform. These questions do not generate any value, but they always make it to the hot list thanks to hype. When there are fewer and fewer questions worth thinking about on Zhihu's hot list, it also means that Zhihu has begun to deteriorate.

Zhihu encourages individuals to share their views, and the atmosphere for speech is relatively relaxed, but this relaxed atmosphere has become a breeding ground for argumentative people. For creators, their carefully crafted works did not receive the recognition they deserved. Instead, because of a small mistake, they were seized upon and magnified and attacked by nitpicking people, who would often raise the banner of "protecting the 5,000-year tradition of the Chinese nation" and "keeping the national moral high ground." Even Dr. Zhang Wenhong's remarks advocating not to drink porridge were labeled by the nitpickers as "worshiping foreign things" and "unable to recognize the essence of Chinese cuisine." They are like maggots attached to the bones, corrupting the very foundation of the platform.

Zhihu encourages sharing and advocates a policy of freedom of speech; an attitude of serious creation; professional and friendly users who share are Zhihu's greatest wealth and the core of the community. It took the Zhihu team nearly 10 years to shape the tone and values ​​of the community.

In recent years, there have been more and more criticisms of Zhihu’s community management, but unfortunately Zhihu’s management has always been inappropriate. As low-quality content and low-quality users become prevalent on the platform, there has gradually been a trend of bad money driving out good money. It is time for Zhihu to strengthen platform management and maintain the tone of the community. Even if it will lose some traffic, Zhihu should not allow destructive factors to grow freely.

Unfortunately, Zhihu has never taken effective action. How to maintain the community tone in the future will still be a huge challenge for the Zhihu team.

The future of Zhihu and the limitations of knowledge communities

The knowledge community has helped Zhihu gain a group of loyal users, accumulated a huge amount of high-quality content, and won seven rounds of capital investment. It should be said that Zhihu's past success depends to a large extent on the success of the knowledge community. However, as Zhihu pursues further development, the shackles of the community have gradually become apparent.

Communities are inherently closed and exclusive. In the early stages of development, these characteristics provided a protective umbrella for the community atmosphere; but in the later stages, when Zhihu began the process of commercialization and expanded its user circle, closedness and exclusivity became the biggest obstacles.

Difficulties in commercialization

At this stage of Zhihu's development, its user base has reached 200 million and its data volume is in the tens of billions, so commercialization is inevitable. Otherwise, Zhihu will not be able to cover its operating costs at all. What's more, there are investors behind Zhihu, who are urging Zhihu to make profits as soon as possible. However, commercial monetization leads to changes in the community atmosphere and causes user dissatisfaction and exodus, which is a problem that almost every community will encounter. This is true for Bilibili and Xiaohongshu, but it is particularly difficult on Zhihu, which is no different from Douban.

China's awareness of intellectual property rights has always been weak. On the one hand, this is related to the lack of relevant laws in China. On the other hand, it is also related to the free thinking since the birth of the Internet in China. The Internet is full of free resources, and no user would be stupid enough to pay for the genuine products.

In recent years, the copyrights of intellectual products such as music, film and television dramas have been purchased and monopolized by Tencent, iQiyi and Youku, which have cracked down on piracy. As the number of users who have no choice but to pay has increased, Chinese netizens have gradually developed an awareness of intellectual property rights.

However, this awareness of property rights only applies to commercialized intellectual content such as music, movies, and books. Although the content shared by users on Zhihu has value, its value itself does not reach the level of commodity value, so users are naturally unwilling to pay for these fragmentary information.

Zhihu's values ​​advocate that "users share each other's expertise, experience and insights, and continuously provide high-quality information for the Chinese Internet."

Since it is shared by users, the starting point itself contains the concept of free of charge, and many users are attracted by such values. However, the platform started to do business under the banner of knowledge sharing. In the eyes of some users, the platform has deviated from its original ideals and betrayed its users.

Zhihu's user group has obvious characteristics, with a large number of young male users and intellectuals. According to Baidu Index statistics, the proportion of male users is as high as 70%; and the user group aged 20-29 accounts for nearly 78%. Young male users are the group least willing to pay for knowledge content. They prefer to obtain the knowledge content they need through technical means and regard payment as a sign of incompetence.

In traditional Chinese culture, intellectuals have always been reluctant to link talent and knowledge with money, maintaining the noble attitude of "regarding money as dirt". This cultural consciousness has been passed down invisibly, making modern educated young people have a deep anti-commercial tendency.

Characteristics of Zhihu user groups

Zhihu platform does not perform well in commercial monetization. The platform's main monetization methods are information flow advertising + knowledge payment (membership + some paid products). Many users complain about the advertisements on Zhihu. There are a lot of pushed ads, with one ad for every two articles. The content of the ads is varied and has little relevance to the platform's attributes, which creates a serious sense of disconnection in the user's reading experience and naturally easily arouses user disgust. Users are not against platforms advertising, but they are against platforms advertising without selection. Quora, another question-and-answer platform, also uses information flow advertising, but it does not cause any disgust among users.

Knowledge payment is in line with the platform attributes of Zhihu, but unfortunately, most of the knowledge products on Zhihu are produced by mid-level PUs and have little appeal. In contrast, those who were invited were IP-level figures in various fields. In the field of knowledge payment, users are more inclined to pay for IP. So despite many criticisms of Luo Pang for selling anxiety, he still makes a lot of money.

Pressure from competitors

Zhihu’s own monetization is not going well, but external platforms are eyeing it covetously. Companies like Get, Hun Dun, and Fenda, which are also in the field of knowledge payment, will squeeze Zhihu's user payments and usage time.

Competitors outside the field cannot be ignored either. The development logic of China's Internet companies is to continue to grow bigger and more comprehensive, and to cross borders. So Toutiao, an information platform, launched Wukong Q&A, and poached 300 big Vs from Zhihu in one go; the information and social platform Weibo launched Q&A; and Bilibili, which focuses on niche two-dimensional culture, transformed itself into a mainstream learning platform. Culture, entertainment and social networking are divided into three parts, which means that 33% of users’ time is spent on the cultural section! Even during the epidemic, the "Never Stop Learning at Bilibili" special topic was launched, and it was selected as the designated platform for Shanghai's "Online Teaching".

To describe Zhihu's situation in one sentence, it is that as far as you look, there are opponents on all sides, and there are countless invisible opponents in the distance. Under such circumstances, one can imagine the pressure on the Zhihu team. Faced with the difficult problem of commercialization and countless competitors, it is not surprising that Zhihu is seeking to break out of its circle, and many of their actions also implicitly hint at their intention to break out of their circle.

Going out of the circle is a double-edged sword

The knowledge community itself has a relatively small audience, and in reality a large proportion of Internet users do not like to accept new knowledge. Even among the target audience, acquiring knowledge scenarios is still a very low-frequency need for most people. But the price of remaining niche is that you can't make money. This has been verified countless times in Douban's development history. "Douban is always blamed, and every step of commercialization is difficult."

To date, Douban still dares not monetize the traffic of its core books, movies, music and groups. Therefore, Zhihu seems to have reached the point where it has to change. However, due to the exclusivity of the community, Zhihu does not dare to take drastic changes, but instead adopts a strategy of small steps and trials.

Zhihu has opened up the platform for posting ideas, and users can publish their thoughts, moods, etc. in the form of short content. Compared with asking and answering questions, posting ideas meets users' lighter expression needs and is used more frequently.

Zhihu introduced live streaming in the form of debate competitions, which is quite unique to the platform. But the next move was to open up e-commerce to promote products and allow topics such as games, dancing, and singing, which are beyond the boundaries of the knowledge field. This seems to indicate that the platform has relaxed restrictions on content and allowed diverse content to grow on the platform. It can even be said that the platform is pinning its hopes on live streaming and hopes to explore more commercialization paths.

Debate Live

Zhihu has also relaxed restrictions on the content of questions. As long as there is hot news, there will inevitably be questions similar to information news - "What do you think of XXX news?" Zhihu does not restrict this obvious practice of riding on the popularity of others, and such questions are often even ranked on the hot list. Combined with the increasing number of entertaining content on the platform, it is not difficult to guess that the platform plays the role of a promoter, driving the diversification of platform content.

Breaking the circle is more of a helpless choice for Zhihu, because the first problem faced in breaking the circle is the change in community atmosphere and the resulting exodus of users. The transition period is extremely long and painful, and even if the transition is successful, it does not guarantee a bright future. What’s more, more communities die before they can achieve transformation.

Judging from Zhihu’s current trends, Zhihu has chosen a development strategy that goes beyond its circle. By relaxing restrictions and providing guidance, we encourage users to produce more diverse content on the platform, and gradually develop other types of communities outside of the knowledge community.

During the transformation process, some users are allowed to leave, while users from other circles are attracted to come in for a change of blood. Sacrificing community tone in exchange for a richer content ecosystem and greater user traffic is also in line with the fate of most Chinese Internet companies: either grow big or die.

Search engines are also an option

In addition to going beyond the circle, does Zhihu have any other options? Maybe there is, make a search engine.

In the WEB era, Baidu crawlers can easily grab all the information on the Internet and provide it to users. With the advent of the mobile Internet era, most content and information are generated in APPs, forming information islands. Crawlers are no longer invincible, and the technological advantages accumulated by Baidu in search engines are gradually reduced. When users need to obtain professional information, in most cases, they need to enter the vertical classification APP to search. Baidu does not have any content platform and is inherently weak in terms of content.

Toutiao has been working hard to develop its search engine business. Its technical accumulation in search engine technology may not be as deep as Baidu's, but through a series of actions such as the "Qingyun Plan", Toutiao has accumulated a huge amount of original content. This advantage is a threat to Baidu. This also explains why Baidu invested heavily in Zhihu during the F round, in order to make up for its content shortcomings and fight against competition from Toutiao Search.

Headline Search

In terms of content, Zhihu has a unique advantage. The platform has nearly 20 million questions and 80 million answers, and the quality of this content is very high, even higher than that of other platforms. The 220 million users accumulated by the platform are still continuously producing content. Assuming that Zhihu has developed the functions of general search engines and then obtained the only entrance to data on Zhihu platform, this prospect is also worth imagining.

With the development of mobile Internet, huge amounts of information are generated every day, and information is becoming more and more fragmented and isolated. However, for Internet users, the value of unstructured information is very low. In the future, the search industry will definitely have a major change, breaking the islanding pattern, connecting all information, including the information within the APP, and reorganizing it, bringing users higher information acquisition efficiency.

For Zhihu’s founding team, if you have the intention to develop a search engine, it is better to join the battlefield as soon as possible. Although the competition will be more intense, it is worth a try.

Although the road ahead is long, we need Zhihu

Since its launch in January 2001, 10 years has not been too long. Zhihu has been stumbled all the way and suffered countless cold eyes and doubts. However, every time in the most difficult moments, Zhihu can always fight back with practical actions. In the field of knowledge, being able to achieve such user scale and data size has even surpassed Quora, which was done earlier.

In the field of knowledge community, there is indeed no company that can do better than Zhihu. However, it is impossible to find a commercial monetization method that fits the characteristics of the platform. It is progressing slowly and filthy in commercial monetization. Even if it has received multiple rounds of financing, but without actual revenue as a backing, Zhihu still lacks confidence and has a long way to go on the road of commercialization.

In order to survive and develop, Zhihu will inevitably change and become different from the past, but we are still full of expectations and hope that Zhihu will do better.

Clay Scheki said that future knowledge is gridded. Only through effective connections can knowledge be shared and inherited across the entire human race.

Despite the many problems, Zhihu is still the best Chinese knowledge platform and still bears the responsibility of connecting people and knowledge. Although the road ahead is long, we need Zhihu and we need Zhihu to retain this pure land of freedom of thought.

Author: Xiang Feng

Source: Xiang Feng

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