Welcome to the wechat subscription number of “Sina Technology”: techsina

Answer hundreds of millions of netizens’ questions, but I haven’t found the answer to how I can make money.

Knowing that the boots returning to Hong Kong stocks finally landed.

On April 11, Zhihu submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and applied for listing in Hong Kong. At noon on the 14th, it was reported that Zhihu raised US $106 million at the price of HK $32.06 per share in the IPO subscription in Hong Kong.

In the domestic Q & a field, Zhihu can be said to be a dominant company, attracting many star investors such as innovation factory, Qiming venture capital, Saifu fund, Tencent and so on. Its lineup can be called luxurious. As a “unicorn” born with a “golden key”, Zhihu seems to have told a good content story to the outside world, but the capital market does not buy it.

In March last year, Zhihu was listed on US stocks and fell below the issue price on the second trading day. As of April 12 this year, Zhihu’s share price had fallen to $2.21, nearly 80% lower than the issue price, with a market value of about $1.44 billion. In July 2018, Zhihu completed a new round of financing of nearly US $300 million, with a valuation of about US $2.5 billion. In other words, four years later, we know that the current market value is less than 60% of the valuation four years ago.

The delay in finding a reliable business realization model seems to be an important reason for the market to vote with its feet. Although Zhihu has never stopped exploring and tested the diversified layout of advertising, knowledge payment, e-commerce and live broadcasting, these attempts still haven’t reversed the loss situation. According to the financial report, the loss in 2021 was almost 1.29 billion yuan, an increase of 148% year-on-year.

Known as “there is a problem, there will be an answer”, Zhihu answered hundreds of millions of questions from netizens, but always couldn’t solve the problem of how to make money.

Rocking knowledge

The annual “gold, silver and four” is the peak employment period of enterprises, but recently there has been news of team adjustment.

In February this year, some users broke the news on the pulse of workplace apps, knowing that the video team was about to cut jobs on a large scale, “almost half”. Although Zhihu later denied that “there is no layoff plan and hopes to attract more excellent talents from the video business”, on April 1, users certified as former Zhihu employees posted that the previously popular Zhihu video department has been laid off as a whole, and the Department has been established for less than half a year. At the same time, Zhihu is recruiting new people and reorganizing the video team.

For most enterprises, layoffs are something they have to do when adjusting their business. It is known that the explosion of layoffs may be related to its business adjustment and route swing.

Zhihu was launched in 2011. At that time, the Internet reading habit was still based on pictures and texts. “High quality picture and text Q & a” became one of the most prominent labels on Zhihu. The transformation took place in 2017. In that year, the “Wukong Q & a” of bytek’s Q & a community came fiercely. Zhang Yiming, the founder of bytek, personally dug up the “corner” of Zhihu on the platform, poached more than 300 big V’s from Zhihu at a high price, and announced that he would spend 1 billion yuan to support the creators in 2018.

Perhaps as a counterattack, or maybe because of the development trend of short video, Zhihu began to support users to upload video content in 2017. In June 2018, Zhihu app added a new “video” zone. In 2019, the “video” zone was cancelled and the “video answer” entrance was added.

However, I know it’s not going well on the road of short video. At the end of 2018, it was known that an independent short video app “Instant Video” had been tested internally. However, in less than a year, the shadow declared its failure. In April 2019, yiyingfa announced that because it failed to meet the established product objectives, i.e. the project team had been dissolved and the client stopped updating.

In fact, Kwai Tat’s direct competitors include the short, short video platforms such as jitter, fast hand and B station. From the quality of the content, the video and live broadcast will inevitably compete with these video platforms. But because of the smaller user size, the inconsistency between platform tonal and the ubiquitous entertainment video platform, the movie will become a victim of the tiktok PK process.

At the 2018 World Internet Conference, Zhou Yuan, founder of Zhihu, once said: “today’s Internet does not need more traffic, but needs better quality.” The implication is that we will not sacrifice content quality for traffic for short-term business interests.

China Vision week 2018

However, under the pressure of being unable to make profits for a long time, Zhihu is gradually compromising to traffic. After all, short video has become a traffic rich mine in the Internet field.

In order to encourage video creation, users click the “+” button at the bottom of Zhihu app home page to pop up four creation methods, including “send video” and “open live broadcast”. In October 2020, Zhihu also launched 500 million cash incentive, 10 billion flow support and other incentive plans, hoping to stimulate the growth of video content.

The effect of “burning money” is obvious. Zhihu disclosed in the financial report of 2021 that “the average monthly video upload volume increased by 211% year-on-year, the number of video creators increased by 33% year-on-year, and the penetration rate of video consumer users in dau (daily active users) exceeded 45%”. However, due to the gap between users and traffic, there is still a big gap between many video core indicators known and competitive products.

It’s almost “stale”

Zhihu users with “985 per capita, annual salary of one million” and “just got off the plane in the United States” were once regarded as a group with “high education, high income and high consumption”, but their liquidity is not strong.

In 2021, Zhihu’s online advertising revenue was 1.161 billion yuan, accounting for 39.23% of the revenue. It was the largest source of revenue, while at the end of 2019, the proportion was as high as 86%. This is regarded as knowing the results of diversification, but it hides the hidden worry of low customer unit price.

In the fourth quarter of last year, the advertising revenue was 378 million yuan. Chen Hao, a venture capitalist, said that he knew that the number of active users in the quarter was 103 million, and that he could earn only 1.2 yuan of advertising fee from active users every month, which is low in the Internet industry. In the same period, the number of monthly activities for Kwai Fu was 570 million, and advertising revenue reached 10 billion 900 million, and the average old fellow iron product could be realizable 6.4 yuan per month.

In fact, most users know that the psychology of “white whoring” is obvious. The fourth quarter of last year

Welcome to the wechat subscription number of “Sina Technology”: techsina

Answer hundreds of millions of netizens’ questions, but I haven’t found the answer to how I can make money.

Knowing that the boots returning to Hong Kong stocks finally landed.

On April 11, Zhihu submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and applied for listing in Hong Kong. At noon on the 14th, it was reported that Zhihu raised US $106 million at the price of HK $32.06 per share in the IPO subscription in Hong Kong.

In the domestic Q & a field, Zhihu can be said to be a dominant company, attracting many star investors such as innovation factory, Qiming venture capital, Saifu fund, Tencent and so on. Its lineup can be called luxurious. As a “unicorn” born with a “golden key”, Zhihu seems to have told a good content story to the outside world, but the capital market does not buy it.

In March last year, Zhihu was listed on US stocks and fell below the issue price on the second trading day. As of April 12 this year, Zhihu’s share price had fallen to $2.21, nearly 80% lower than the issue price, with a market value of about $1.44 billion. In July 2018, Zhihu completed a new round of financing of nearly US $300 million, with a valuation of about US $2.5 billion. In other words, four years later, we know that the current market value is less than 60% of the valuation four years ago.

The delay in finding a reliable business realization model seems to be an important reason for the market to vote with its feet. Although Zhihu has never stopped exploring and tested the diversified layout of advertising, knowledge payment, e-commerce and live broadcasting, these attempts still haven’t reversed the loss situation. According to the financial report, the loss in 2021 was almost 1.29 billion yuan, an increase of 148% year-on-year.

Known as “there is a problem, there will be an answer”, Zhihu answered hundreds of millions of questions from netizens, but always couldn’t solve the problem of how to make money.

Rocking knowledge

The annual “gold, silver and four” is the peak employment period of enterprises, but recently there has been news of team adjustment.

In February this year, some users broke the news on the pulse of workplace apps, knowing that the video team was about to cut jobs on a large scale, “almost half”. Although Zhihu later denied that “there is no layoff plan and hopes to attract more excellent talents from the video business”, on April 1, users certified as former Zhihu employees posted that the previously popular Zhihu video department has been laid off as a whole, and the Department has been established for less than half a year. At the same time, Zhihu is recruiting new people and reorganizing the video team.

For most enterprises, layoffs are something they have to do when adjusting their business. It is known that the explosion of layoffs may be related to its business adjustment and route swing.

Zhihu was launched in 2011. At that time, the Internet reading habit was still based on pictures and texts. “High quality picture and text Q & a” became one of the most prominent labels on Zhihu. The transformation took place in 2017. In that year, the “Wukong Q & a” of bytek’s Q & a community came fiercely. Zhang Yiming, the founder of bytek, personally dug up the “corner” of Zhihu on the platform, poached more than 300 big V’s from Zhihu at a high price, and announced that he would spend 1 billion yuan to support the creators in 2018.

Perhaps as a counterattack, or maybe because of the development trend of short video, Zhihu began to support users to upload video content in 2017. In June 2018, Zhihu app added a new “video” zone. In 2019, the “video” zone was cancelled and the “video answer” entrance was added.

However, I know it’s not going well on the road of short video. At the end of 2018, it was known that an independent short video app “Instant Video” had been tested internally. However, in less than a year, the shadow declared its failure. In April 2019, yiyingfa announced that because it failed to meet the established product objectives, i.e. the project team had been dissolved and the client stopped updating.

In fact, Kwai Tat’s direct competitors include the short, short video platforms such as jitter, fast hand and B station. From the quality of the content, the video and live broadcast will inevitably compete with these video platforms. But because of the smaller user size, the inconsistency between platform tonal and the ubiquitous entertainment video platform, the movie will become a victim of the tiktok PK process.

At the 2018 World Internet Conference, Zhou Yuan, founder of Zhihu, once said: “today’s Internet does not need more traffic, but needs better quality.” The implication is that we will not sacrifice content quality for traffic for short-term business interests.

China Vision week 2018

However, under the pressure of being unable to make profits for a long time, Zhihu is gradually compromising to traffic. After all, short video has become a traffic rich mine in the Internet field.

In order to encourage video creation, users click the “+” button at the bottom of Zhihu app home page to pop up four creation methods, including “send video” and “open live broadcast”. In October 2020, Zhihu also launched 500 million cash incentive, 10 billion flow support and other incentive plans, hoping to stimulate the growth of video content.

The effect of “burning money” is obvious. Zhihu disclosed in the financial report of 2021 that “the average monthly video upload volume increased by 211% year-on-year, the number of video creators increased by 33% year-on-year, and the penetration rate of video consumer users in dau (daily active users) exceeded 45%”. However, due to the gap between users and traffic, there is still a big gap between many video core indicators known and competitive products.

It’s almost “stale”

Zhihu users with “985 per capita, annual salary of one million” and “just got off the plane in the United States” were once regarded as a group with “high education, high income and high consumption”, but their liquidity is not strong.

In 2021, Zhihu’s online advertising revenue was 1.161 billion yuan, accounting for 39.23% of the revenue. It was the largest source of revenue, while at the end of 2019, the proportion was as high as 86%. This is regarded as knowing the results of diversification, but it hides the hidden worry of low customer unit price.

In the fourth quarter of last year, the advertising revenue was 378 million yuan. Chen Hao, a venture capitalist, said that he knew that the number of active users in the quarter was 103 million, and that he could earn only 1.2 yuan of advertising fee from active users every month, which is low in the Internet industry. In the same period, the number of monthly activities for Kwai Fu was 570 million, and advertising revenue reached 10 billion 900 million, and the average old fellow iron product could be realizable 6.4 yuan per month.

In fact, most users know that the psychology of “white whoring” is obvious. The fourth quarter of last year