Editor's note: This article is from the WeChat public account "tech planet" (id: tech618), author Jia Ningyu, 36Kr is published with permission.
What would it be like if you knew about the party? Who can be the person or link? Knowingly, below this question, there are more than 20,000 answers. Regarding the Zhihu party, the community gave countless conjectures and brain holes.
Some respondents believe that the Q&A is the characteristic of Zhihu, and the content form of the Q&A should be presented in an entertaining way, not boring preaching, the difficulty coefficient is high, and "the optimal solution cannot be imagined". Ten-year-old Zhihu has never held any video carrier form of the party, to some extent, compared to the b station, vibrato, and kuaishou with video native genes, Zhihu does not seem to have the opportunity.
But following the nature of the community, on January 25, Zhihu submitted another possibility for the party: an immersive and dramatic "Night of Answers". In the trailer, the party is composed of fifteen typical zhihu-style questions, "How to gracefully tell the boss that I am not happy?" "How do you evaluate the human characteristics of eating a spoonful?" "Deyun Society Magic Cultivation Report"... They correspond to 15 strong "Zhihu" programs, nearly 200 minutes of programs, connecting the ten years of Zhihu.
This is not only the debut of the party only once in ten years, but also in another sense, this is also the first medium-length video IP planted by Zhihu in the field of video, behind the 15 programs, is the video presentation of 15 Zhihu related content.
The party is another important signal of Zhihu Power Video. In October last year, Zhihu's home page was revised, the video was included in the main menu bar, and a series of actions such as the launch of the video support plan "Haiyan Plan" all indicate that in the field of medium video, Zhihu is gradually emerging.
Of course, the video layout of Zhihu is far more than the surface changes. A large number of high-quality content is precipitated on Zhihu, and Zhihu has also begun to tap the film and television value of content IP. In January, the urban suspense unit short drama "Shhh! "Look at the mobile phone" and the suspense short drama "The Fourth Interrogation Room" have been officially completed, and the two dramas are born out of the original content of Zhihu, and Zhihu is also involved in the film and television field as a producer. At the same time, on January 31, Zhihu's first science fiction drama "Hanmei Project 2021" has also been officially launched.
In 2021, Zhihu, who has long been the leader in the field of graphic questions and answers, is working on the video to build a more stable content moat. And on the question of how to do a good job in the layout of the video, what kind of answer will be given by Zhihu?
Undoubtedly, for Zhihu, "Answer Adventure Night" is a successful attempt. In the Zhihu station, in the evening program, Li Xueqin's "Workplace Blackening Guide" video clip received more than 8 million views; the 67-chapter novel adaptation of the 67-chapter novel "Zhen Huan's Biography of An Lingrong Rebirth" written by Zhihu user "Spicy Chrysanthemum Small Tuanzi" reached 9 million views.
"Answer Strange Night" is the first experience of Zhihu party production and native video IP creation. Zhihu found the director Gong Peng, who produced the 2020 and 2021 New Year's Eve parties for the b station, to know that the 2020 b station New Year's Eve party, relying on the content to break the circle, has become a veritable brush screen New Year's Eve. The same community atmosphere is strong, and the knowledge of a unique content ecology also needs a circle-breaking party.
Holding the "Answer Adventure Night", Zhihu has a very essential goal, hoping to no longer only absorb the "elite" Kochi crowd, while gradually de-serious, reduce the psychological threshold of users, and form a high-quality content platform that attracts a wider range of users.
Compared with the data level of traffic, what is really important is whether this party can make the outside world realize the explosive power of the accumulated content in the community and the prospect of video-based high-quality content. The origin of "The Rebirth of An Lingrong", which made Tao Xinran, who played An Lingrong, cry on the spot, was born a question of high fever: "If you are An Lingrong, how to turn defeat into victory?" "
Some people have "watched it dozens of times", still regretting the ending of the character, and each respondent tries to let An Lingrong go to another ending, looking for more answers that belong to life. For Zhihu, the "Answer Adventure Night" also allowed Zhihu to find a certain answer, the discussion and dissemination caused by the video content of a single program, which verified one of the solutions to how high-quality graphic content continues to generate value - the appropriate content is properly videoized.
Since its inception in 2011, more than 220 million users have produced 44 million questions and 240 million answers, which constitute the rich content soil of Zhihu content. The form of video can allow high-quality answers and questions to get secondary exposure, spreading from new carriers to a wider range of people.
This party is the first time in the history of Zhihu to create a brand-new video big IP from 0 to 1, which belongs to Zhihu itself. Formally, the host is called the "questioner", and at the beginning of the party, it includes "thank you for the invitation", "just got off the plane", "heartache answering the lord", "knowing the small transparent", "above" and so on.
Judging from the final presentation of the 15 programs, this must be an exclusive evening with the uniqueness of the community. The aesthetic concept of "theater style", immersive viewing experience, coupled with a rich taste of the program and content form. For example, the "Questions I Will Answer Everyone" of the Five-Jo People refers to the characteristics of knowing that "if there is a problem, there is an answer".
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"The Answer to the Night of Adventure" is a trail that belongs to the era of zhihu video." Although the threshold of video technology has been gradually lowered, the unique content that is sufficient to form barriers is still a shortage, and in this evening, the high-quality Q&A content has the power to travel through time and carrier.
In the development of Chinese video dramas, in 2021, Zhihu has a new identity that is officially external: producer.
The opportunity for actor Li Guangjie to become the lord of Zhihu is precisely from a Zhihu self-made drama. In late December 2020, he received a notice to play an "observer" in a science fiction drama, on duty code-named "Hanmei Project". Although it is a science fiction film, the character played by Li Guangjie neither wears a mech, nor does he wear electronic devices, but just wears an ordinary uniform, constantly reasoning, taking risks, and launching thrilling actions in secret experiments.
Li Guangjie shared the shooting details of "Hanmei Project 2021" on Zhihu, a science fiction drama adapted from the work "Saddler" by He Xi, a new generation of Chinese science fiction writers, and also Zhihu's first attempt at the film and television development of science fiction IP. In the past few years, science fiction works have been heating up in the domestic film and television drama market, and there are hardcore science fiction topic areas that know and also devote themselves to the production of science fiction short dramas.
Self-made drama is another attempt by Zhihu in the field of Chinese video, in addition to "Hanmei Project 2021", Zhihu's suspenseful short drama "Shh! "Look at the phone" and "The Fourth Interrogation Room" will also be officially broadcast in 2021.
Interestingly, although "Hanmei Project 2021" is an adaptation of the work, Zhihu invited the respondents in the field of science fiction to participate in the co-creation. And "Shhh! Look at the mobile phone" and the content of the "Fourth Interrogation Room" are all derived from the Zhihu Salt Selection Column.
Shhh! "Looking at mobile phones" is set in the "screen era" in which modern people live, telling 12 stories about mobile phones. "The Fourth Interrogation Room" focuses on a few small people in the background of the four major eras of reform and opening up, layoffs, millennium and Olympic Games from 1989 to 2008, looking into the inner world of each suspect.
Knowing the essence of getting involved in the upstream of the film and television industry is that the value of the content is spilling over to the outside world. In 2019, Zhihu user "Mengwa" created the novel "Palace Wall Willow" stimulated by the atmosphere of Zhihu community, and then its copyright was purchased by publishing houses and film and television institutions.
The more well-known story is the once-popular web drama "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an", which also originated from an answer by author Ma Boyong on Zhihu, "If you come to write the plot of Assassin's Creed, where will you set the background?" Based on this answer, Ma Boyong wrote the novel "The Twelve Hours of Chang'an", which landed on Zhihu in the form of an e-book, and was subsequently adapted into a TV series.
At the same time, under the topic of science fiction, millions of users, tens of thousands of questions and millions of answers are active. Liu Cixin, Wang Jinkang, He Xi, Han Song, Chen Qifan and other science fiction writers, Guo Fan, Zhang Xiaobei and other science fiction film directors have shared works and ideas. Liu Cixin once asked, "It and network technology development is increasingly eliminating barriers to distance, will this trend slow down or even stop the process of urbanization, or gradually dissolve existing cities?" Han Song personally answered the question about "how to evaluate Han Song's science fiction novels".
In essence, Zhihu provides the possibility of high-quality content flowing between different media in addition to the existing commercialization channels, users get a richer content consumption experience, and creators who truly produce high-quality content can also harvest greater value.
The form of graphic questions and answers formed over the years, how to rationalize the existence of the carrier of video, I know that it has taken time to explore.
Zhang Rongle, vice president of Zhihu, previously said in an interview with Tech Planet that the goal of Zhihu in 2020 is to establish a positive content circulation mechanism in the video field. "I've always believed in knowing the power of the community, improving the infrastructure, making the content self-circulating, and the snowball can get bigger and bigger."
The latest set of data is that as of December last year, after the launch of the "Haiyan Project" in October 2020, the amount of video content and active video respondents increased by nearly 3 times. In the daily upload of videos, more than 80% of them are more than 1 minute of medium videos; the head respondents in various fields such as Zhang Jiawei, Li Lei, Qian Cheng, Liu Laoshi, Shu Gui k, etc. have also begun to create videos in Zhihu, and each person has received more than 10 million levels of video playback.
At the same time, the famous band "Five People", the well-known video creators "Old Rice Bones" and "Handmade Geng" also settled in Zhihu to share their video content, which received great attention. Among them, the "old rice bone" was settled within 1 month, and the powder increased by 20w.
More and more users are beginning to learn to use video to produce content within Zhihu, and video creators are also aiming at the dividend period of the rise of the video content ecology in Zhihu. If in 2020, Zhihu established a basic video content looping mechanism, then at the beginning of 2021, Zhihu provided two types of models for video-based high-quality graphic content: a party caused by problems, and three video IP dramas from text.
Whether it is "Answer Adventure Night", a single program can gather respondents from multiple fields including outdoor adventure, unmanned driving, oral medicine, archaeology, physics, food science, etc., to discuss problems such as "Brain Hole", or to incubate self-made dramas based on the ecology of Zhihu native content, all of which are based on the rich content accumulated in Zhihu and the ecology of UGC creators, which is the most core advantage of Zhihu in the competition in the field of medium video.
In terms of knowledge, many seemingly absurd questions have been unexpectedly and rigorously analyzed and answered. "Give you $1 billion, but there will be a snail that will hunt you down forever, why don't you do it?" In zhihu, there are more than 10,000 answers, some people carefully calculate the general theory of being hunted and killed by snails, and some people write salt selection columns based on this question, and write stories with great brains.
"What if you eat a small spoonful of the sun?" "What if you eat a small spoonful of nuclear waste?" "What kind of experience is xxx?" "How to evaluate xxx" and other strange questions and answers under the questions, constructing a unique "knowing universe". This is the most valuable asset of Zhihu as a content community, and it is also the reason why Zhihu has always stood firm on the Q&A track for 10 years and is difficult to meet opponents. This also answers another question, knowing that it is necessary to make a video, otherwise it is really a blood loss to put this natural advantage to others, and the answerers in various fields should also turn the video, and there is no reason for so many treasures in the hand to be material for others.
In the situation where video has become a certain future, the path of how content platforms do video is surprisingly consistent.
Not only does Douyin and Kuaishou gradually open up the video duration limit, weChat background can upload videos within 30 minutes; on the other hand, the long video platform iQiyi has launched a video community product "Instant"; Watermelon Video also announced that in the next year, Watermelon Video will take out at least 2 billion yuan for subsidies to force the "Medium Video" track.
The background of the medium video fire is because the playback time of the short video for a few minutes cannot take into account the depth of the content; and the playback time of the long video of more than half an hour is more critical of the user's free time. Medium videos of more than 1 minute have a good balance in terms of content and duration. On the other hand, some people engaged in video production said that most of the chinese video is basically in the hundreds of thousands of playback levels, while the short video is basically about 10 million, in a sense, the video still has a very large growth space.
The vice president of Zhihu also said in an interview that the content of Zhihu is more in-depth in the vertical field, and the particularly short video is not suitable for the Ecology of Zhihu. Suitable for knowing is about 3-5 minutes of video, which can tell a thing more clearly and let users have a sense of gain.
This can also be seen from the statistics of the world's leading video platform Youtube, which currently has a total stock of 5.2 billion + youtube videos, a total of 2 billion users+, and a total daily viewing time of 1 billion hours +. Among them, the average length of the video in the top 250,000 channels is 13 to 14 minutes, which is the mainstream length of the medium video.
Among the many medium video platforms, the community barriers of b station, the traffic advantage of watermelon, and the ip resource library of Zhihu are the three platforms with the most core competitiveness. In the track of China Video, the three companies have their own advantages, and the entire market is still in a state of fighting and not knowing. In particular, the IP advantage of Zhihu, as the most favorable support for video content, has become a content treasure of many video platforms. Catching up with zhihu, just do a good job of better combining the video and the graphic carrier in the community, and will "answer the class". Video features bigger and stronger.
Previously, Zhihu said that the emerging "answer" video form is widely popular and more suitable for most users' video production forms. Compared with the traditional video form, the "explanatory" video is no longer mainly based on video screens, but mainly on text manuscripts, with corresponding text or GIFs, and the main body of its content is still text.
From the current point of view, The video upgrade of Zhihu is also relatively smooth. For example, I know that there is a high school history teacher "heartbroken Liu Laoshi", who used to tell historical stories in the form of pictures and texts, and since August this year, he has begun to try to tell historical stories in the form of videos, and the unique voice of smoke voice has become a special symbol. Of the six video content released so far, the highest number of views has reached 2.44 million.
As Zhang Rongle, vice president of Zhihu, said in an interview with Tech Planet, Zhihu's goal this year is to establish a positive content circulation mechanism in the video field. "I've always believed in knowing the power of the community, improving the infrastructure, making the content self-circulating, and the snowball can get bigger and bigger."
In the "Answer Adventure Night" that just passed in Zhihu, starting with the opening show "There is a Problem", Wang Yuan's song "Answer" ended, echoing the unique culture of Zhihu as a Q&A community, and also drawing a perfect end to the decade of Zhihu. In the next decade, the competition around the video of content platforms will inevitably intensify, and the answer to the medium video, Zhihu seems to have just written a sentence of "thank you", those who have opened their minds, rich in new knowledge or full of stories are gradually generating in the zhihu universe.