Toutiao spent 36 million to poach 1/3 of Zhihu's big Vs. This is not a lot of money, but it is not worth it.

"Toutiao poached 300 big Vs from Zhihu, which will help purify the environment of Zhihu."

Yesterday, Luo Zhenyu posted a message on WeChat Moments saying “something is going on in the arena” and attached a screenshot of the WeChat Moments of “Devil Daddy”. On the same day, Weibo certified blogger “Lao Ya Pi” posted the same picture.

The devil dad said: "Toutiao has signed more than 300 Zhihu big Vs this year. They just signed me, and they paid me. My annual income is higher than that of ordinary white-collar workers. After signing, all content can no longer be posted on Zhihu. High-quality content creators have been snatched up, so the quality of Zhihu is getting worse and worse."

There is nothing wrong with pursuing content monetization. But is this self-proclaimed "high-quality content creator" really worthy of the title? This person is called "Emo's Daddy" on Zhihu. Although he has accumulated 450,000 fans, his reputation is not good. Zhihu co-founder Zhang Liang said: "At least in the past year, I have hoped that two people would leave Zhihu quickly, one is Emo's Daddy, and the other is Mr. Huo."

By looking through the comments of "Evil Film Dad" on Zhihu and other platforms, we found that vulgar messages and abusive words are everywhere. An anonymous Zhihu user commented on him: "This is a person with the most uneducated and uncultured character. This kind of person must have become famous through marketing techniques, mainly to make money."

36 million yuan to poach 300 Zhihu big Vs, 20 million yuan to poach internet celebrity anchors, Toutiao relies on spending money to poach talents to develop products

In June this year, "Toutiao Q&A" was officially renamed "Wukong Q&A" and operated independently. In order to quickly expand the content of the platform, increase user stickiness, and form competitiveness with other Q&A platforms, "poaching" became its preferred method. Of course, you can't poach "poaching" without gold.

Toutiao offers a payout of 200 to 500 yuan per article, with a minimum of 10 articles per month, no less than 500 words per article, and pictures, capped at 10,000 yuan per month. In other words, the annual salary of a signed big V is between 24,000 and 120,000 yuan, and Toutiao has to pay 7.2 million to 36 million yuan for this every year, and "Evil Film Dad" is one of these 300 people.

What do 300 people mean to Zhihu? "According to the distribution of Zhihu fans, the total number of Zhihu big Vs is about 1,000, which means that Toutiao has poached nearly one-third of Zhihu's big Vs.

However, Zhihu did not care about this. The official response said: "Whether from the atmosphere within the site or the background data, this incident has not affected us. High-quality content producers are still continuing to produce and share high-quality content."

This is not the first time that Toutiao has spent money to buy big Vs. When promoting Huoshan Video, it poached many "Internet celebrity anchors" from Kuaishou, including MC Tianyou with a net worth of 20 million, Erlu with a net worth of 6 million, and alien Chen Shan with a net worth of 3.3 million.

However, many Kuaishou anchors are labeled as "vulgar" in the industry. They either tell dirty jokes, are transvestites, or are masochists to attract attention, or they eat live maggots, insects, and snakes in a unique way. Huoshan Video, which poached Kuaishou anchors, later held a press conference to launch the "Flame Plan" in the rural hometown of anchor "Jinshan". The main content is to improve the quality of short video content by increasing monetization and training creators. Netizens expressed a one-sided opposition to this.

Toutiao has 120 million daily active users, and strict exclusivity conditions cannot make up for the lack of high-quality content

Toutiao has been developing rapidly in recent years. As of July 31 this year, Toutiao's daily active users have reached 120 million. Its high traffic is its biggest asset, and Toutiao has always been good at monetizing traffic. Its advertising revenue was 1.5 billion yuan in 2015, 6 billion yuan in 2016, and is expected to exceed 15 billion yuan in 2017.

Wukong Q&A, which is backed by Toutiao, also has considerable traffic performance. Currently, there are more than 50 million users on the platform, including Jing Tian, ​​Liu Yan, Luo Yonghao, etc. The platform receives more than 10,000 questions and more than 100,000 answers every day.

However, Toutiao uses intelligent crawling to integrate news information, and its random reprinting has caused lawsuits from many media. The platform is full of "clickbait" titles, and the content is mostly meaningless. The user experience is not good, and it is even called "the king of rags on the Internet" by the three bills. Last year, the National Office for Combating Pornography and Illegal Publications announced 12 typical cases of "Net Cleaning 2016", and Toutiao was punished for spreading pornographic information. From May to July this year, Toutiao was punished for 240, 506, and 442 illegal accounts respectively. Wukong Q&A is also inevitably affected. At present, in the Apple App Store, the APP is rated for those over 17 years old because it contains a lot of vulgar and pornographic information.

Before "Wukong Q&A" was renamed, Toutiao launched the "1000 People, 10,000 Yuan" plan. The goal of the plan is to enable 1,000 individual "Toutiao accounts" to receive a guaranteed monthly income of no less than 10,000 yuan. Selected authors must publish at least 10 original articles each month and must not reprint them on other platforms within 3 hours of their first release on the entire network; reprinting after 3 hours must indicate: XX is a contracted author of Toutiao account (XX is the account name).

The plan was not successful after implementation because the exclusivity requirements were too strict. In signing the contract with 300 Zhihu big Vs, Toutiao also put forward exclusivity conditions. Although it no longer requires too much exclusivity from the individuals, it still requires absolute exclusivity in terms of content, and cannot reprint on other competitive platforms such as Zhihu, Baidu Knows, Guokr, Jianshu, Tencent News, Tiantian Kuaibao, NetEase News, Sina News, Sohu News, Yidian Zixun, etc.

However, Toutiao, which offers a whopping 20 million yuan to a popular anchor, does not offer high prices to big Vs who write useful articles on Zhihu. In addition, even the contracted answerers feel constrained and uncomfortable when they are asked to "work hard" on Wukong Q&A, which has restrictions on the number of words, pictures, and manuscripts. One answerer signed a contract in the second quarter of this year, but has only completed 5 manuscripts so far.

The difference in user attributes between Toutiao and Zhihu is a natural barrier

It is an indisputable fact that Toutiao is hungry for content. It urgently needs high-quality content to enhance the user stickiness of the platform. However, Toutiao, which relies on the eyeball economy, hopes to quickly form its own competitive strength in a short period of time. Just like Douyin, Xigua Video, Huoshan Video, etc. before, it will quickly increase the influence of the Q&A platform by spending money. Maybe spending money can stimulate creation in a short period of time, but it is definitely not a long-term solution. Zhihu's Q&A model did not begin to expand its influence until three years after it was in operation.

Zhihu responded by saying: "Behind the production of truly valuable content is deep thinking, years of professional practice, and mutual inspiration from peer exchanges. This cannot be simply and crudely mass-produced or mass-priced. This is why we do not blindly chase traffic or use superficial means to force growth."

It is impossible for Toutiao to use money to copy Zhihu. Even if 300 big Vs join Wukong Q&A, it does not mean that they have left Zhihu, and their influence on Zhihu may not be directly brought to Wukong Q&A. The reason why Zhihu big Vs are successful is that they have a large number of Zhihu users as soil, and they stage wonderful competitions in the confrontation of different opinions with other users. Whether "posting" or "following", the remarks of these big Vs can easily "stir up a thousand waves", and these "waves" are due to the tacit understanding between the big Vs and other users. The most important thing is that Zhihu users are mainly distributed in first- and second-tier cities, while Toutiao users are mostly in fourth- and fifth-tier cities. There is a natural barrier between them that is difficult to break.

Of course, Zhihu is not as good as Toutiao in terms of content monetization. If Toutiao offers more generous conditions, more Zhihu big Vs will sign contracts. Zhihu big V Zhang Jiawei said: "Zhihu's previous revisions and tendencies have not been good at protecting content producers. At least two people have said to me, 'If there is no money, at least give me a sense of accomplishment. Now even this cannot be guaranteed.'"

A famous Zhihu user named "情何亦坎" conducted an experiment in which he posted the same article on three platforms. An hour later, the number of readers on Zhihu was not visible, and the number of likes was the worst. In addition, the growing number of third-party marketing platforms also infiltrated the content operation in the form of Zhihu users, affecting the experience of other users.

It can be seen that Zhihu users still have many dissatisfactions with the operation of the platform, but compared with other platforms, they are still willing to stay because it still occupies the domestic content high ground. Toutiao, which entered the Q&A field only a year ago, did not see the barriers between Zhihu and Wukong Q&A. Toutiao's personalized recommendations reduced the sticky interaction between fans and answerers. Toutiao's accumulated users are not very interested in the dry goods of two to three thousand words. The content created by 300 Zhihu big Vs has no advantage in Wukong Q&A based on algorithms.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.