# "Just got off the plane", 49 billion evaporated By [Albert](https://paragraph.com/@albert-17) · 2022-04-30 --- In 2021, the 10th anniversary of Zhihu’s operation, China’s largest online Q & a community successfully landed in US stocks, and people have high hopes for its future. But just a year later, Zhihu’s share price has fallen nearly 90%. From the peak of $13.8 per share to $1.56, the total market value also plummeted from the peak of $9 billion to about $1 billion, and the evaporation amount is equivalent to more than 49 billion yuan. “In order to cope with the more complicated situation”, Zhihu seeks Dual Major listing in Hong Kong stocks. This listing method can have the same listing status of two listing places at the same time. Zhihu’s 26 million shares issued in Hong Kong stocks are old shares sold by old shareholders, including well-known institutions such as innovation workshop, Qiming venture capital, Saifu investment fund and today’s capital. The withdrawal of these institutions makes this listing feel sad and sad. Zhihu Hong Kong stock prospectus On the other hand, shortly before landing in Hong Kong stocks, US regulators announced that Zhihu would be included in the temporary delisting list. Zhihu responded: “our company has completed the Dual Major listing in Hong Kong. We will pay close attention to the progress in the future. The impact of this event on Zhihu is limited“ But the market reaction was greater than expected. On the day of Zhihu’s official landing in Hong Kong stocks on April 22, Zhihu’s closing price was HK $24.5 per share, down 23.5% from the bidding price. A series of events made Zhihu CEO Zhou Yuan feel at Zhihu: “forget the capital market for the time being. Exercise in winter.” mud and sand are carried along -- there is a mingling of good and bad According to the latest financial report data, Zhihu’s revenue and loss are growing. In 2021, Zhihu’s revenue was 2.959 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 119%, while in 2019, this figure was only 670 million yuan. In fact, Zhihu’s growth rate is not low. However, compared with the revenue, the loss is also growing rapidly. The net loss in 2021 is 1.299 billion yuan, an increase of 151% year-on-year. Zhihu explained that this is the investment in building the content ecosystem. CEO Zhou Yuan said, “there will be a loss reduction target this year.” Zhihu’s three-year revenue and loss data (Figure source: Zhihu prospectus) Zhou Yuan mentioned in a public article that “crossing the cycle” has become one of his most concerned things at a time when black swans and gray rhinoceros are frequent. One of the ways he found was to put “community ecology” first and take it as a starting point to cross the cycle. However, this happens to be the most criticized thing known at present. Many old users of Zhihu believe that the ecology of Zhihu is being destroyed. The so-called destroyed ecology refers to a professional, open and inclusive knowledge sharing atmosphere. When Zhihu first launched in 2011, it adopted the invitation registration system, including Ma Huateng, Xu Xiaoping, Li Kaifu and other business leaders. It also attracts users with outstanding ability in all walks of life, so that it is ridiculed as “985 per capita”. It is a community with a strong elite atmosphere. Ma Huateng’s Zhihu home page The early Q & a quality of Zhihu is indeed very high. You can see quite professional answers in the fields of science and technology, humanities and business. The communication and discussion between users are also very in-depth, and even extended to offline. “Thank you for your invitation”, which is familiar to Zhihu users, has not only become the tradition of Zhihu, but also the embodiment of this good communication atmosphere. If you don’t care about commercialization, you may be able to maintain the scale of minority communities, and this atmosphere can be retained. However, knowing that it has chosen commercialization, it is inevitable to strive for more users. In 2013, Zhihu opened its registration, and then the number of users exploded. By 2017, the total number of individual registered users had exceeded 100 million and the number of daily users had exceeded 26 million. The rapid growth in the number of users soon diluted the concentration of known elites. Not only the questions become boring, but also the answers become more and more shallow. Zhihu has gradually changed from a Knowledge Q & a platform to an irrigation forum. More importantly, Zhihu’s “community” is gradually fading, and from a Q & a community to a Q & a platform, it is difficult for users to feel a clear community value. This makes high-quality users begin to lose, and high-quality content begins to decrease, which is filled with some low-quality or even vulgar content. “Per capita 985” has gradually changed from a description to a mockery. Search “Zhihu per capita 985” in Zhihu This has affected the commercialization of Zhihu to some extent. CEO Zhou Yuan said, “in essence, community ecology is not only a way to produce and consume content, but also a model to build business. We have seen that good content continues to emerge in a good community ecology, and we have also seen that business activities can be sustained under the promotion of good content.” However, compared with a more professional knowledge payment platform, there are more things to consider, because it is an open Q & a platform with community attributes. Content production depends heavily on users’ output ability and output willingness, which is a problem that knowledge payment platforms without community attributes do not need to consider. Other platforms only need to find big coffee to produce high-quality content. Therefore, once the content of Zhihu begins to inject water and the gold content decreases, its professionalism will be questioned by users, thus changing the user structure, and then fall into the vicious circle of “bad money expelling good money” in the content field. For Zhihu who attaches great importance to community ecology, this seems to have not seen an effective solution. Can’t do video The emergence of short video has caused a severe impact on the whole Internet content ecology. Video is attracting the attention of more and more Internet users. Zhihu also wants to seize this wave and achieve new breakthroughs. But this road is not smooth. This year alone, there have been three rumors of layoffs in the video department. Although it is denied every time, it is an indisputable fact that the growth of video business is weak. There are signs that the video business is in a hurry. Netease app store’s evaluation of Zhihu (source: News) According to the interface news report, some of Zhihu’s former employees believed that making a video was like a decision to shoot the forehead. The product direction was not clear, and the team members changed again and again. It is reported that in 2021, Zhihu senior management requested that the daily broadcast volume of Zhihu video should reach more than 90 million by the end of the year. But at the beginning of the year, --- *Originally published on [Albert](https://paragraph.com/@albert-17/just-got-off-the-plane-49-billion-evaporated)*