Founder, Chairman and CEO Zhou Yuan - Building Connections, Generating Action, and "Gaining" are the core values of quality content| WISE2021 King of the New Economy Conference

From December 13th to 15th, the 36Kr WISE 2021 New Economy King Summit was held in Shanghai, and this year we will focus on the theme of "Hardcore Era". "Hardcore" is the challenge and opportunity brought by the current era and the general environment to China's new economy enterprises, on the one hand, enterprises are required to pay attention to technological innovation and find their own "hard core" barriers; on the other hand, enterprises are required to give back to the society and show more "hardcore" responsibilities and responsibilities. As we move from the "application era" of business model innovation to the "hardcore era" of technological innovation, we gathered with hundreds of hard-core enterprises to focus on popular tracks such as macro policies, intelligent manufacturing, semiconductors, new energy, and new consumption, and comprehensively discussed how to build innovation-driven hard-core competitiveness in various fields.

Zhou Yuan, founder, chairman and CEO of Zhihu, shared Zhihu's research exploration and thinking in the content industry with the theme of ""Sense of Gain" is the Greatest Common Denominator in the Development of the Content Industry" as the theme. Zhou Yuan believes that the real business value of content is to establish connections and generate actions. He outlined three characteristics of quality content for users: "broadening horizons, helping, and empathizing," all under the concept of "gaining a sense of achievement."

In Zhihu, "sense of gain" is the core value of high-quality content, the "greatest common denominator" of users, enterprises, merchants and industries, and the cornerstone of the content industry and even the entire commercial society towards long-termism. In the future, Zhihu will also start a super-long cycle of self-evolution with "sense of gain" as the core. At the WISE conference, Zhou Yuan also announced the official opening of the second decade of Zhihu, which will open a super-long cycle of self-evolution with "sense of gain" as the core, and the first initiative is: Zhihu 8.0 will be fully launched from now on.

The following is the transcript of Zhou Yuan's speech, which was compiled and edited by 36Kr:

Distinguished guests, good morning! I am Zhou Yuan, who knows how to know, and I am grateful for having such an opportunity to communicate with you today. The topic I want to share today is that "sense of acquisition" is the biggest common denominator in the development of the content industry.

Zhou Yuan "WISE2021 King of the New Economy Conference" speech

I think everyone agrees that quality content is the core value of the content industry. But I've been thinking about a question, what exactly is quality content?

Zhihu is currently the largest Q&A community in China, and it is also an original content platform with a high concentration of creators. Any topic entering Zhihu has a variety of in-depth discussions from professional perspectives, showing a different content style and form. At present, the reading rate of pictures and texts on Zhihu has reached 78%, which is very high at the moment of information excess.

Why is Zhihu's content so appealing? People used to think it was because the content was "professional". Of course, today we still think that "professionalism" is the foundation of zhihu content, but this is not enough to explain everything that has happened in zhihu in the past decade.

Professional, the corresponding is actually knowledge. Knowledge is the sum of the results achieved by human exploration of the world, and there are objective and unified standards, so professionalism is important. But what has a major impact on our lives is not only knowledge, but also experience and insight, and most importantly, our connection to each other as members of humanity.

Looking back over the past decade, at the beginning we have a very strong feeling that every user in the community is like a pioneer, an explorer in an unknown world. It's so cool that everyone is constantly asking and asking questions. So in the beginning our slogan was called "Discovering the Bigger World."

Later, more and more "problems" arose. Those who are in the moment, the questions around them, the answers to life and work, the things that are closely related to themselves... As soon as you raise your hand to ask a question, someone will raise their hand to answer. The answerers are especially like a street lamp, just away from you, they are the problem solvers in life, and they are also very cool.

As a result, Zhihu is not only a channel for users to obtain knowledge, but also participates in a certain reality through the vote of approval and opposition, resulting in value beyond knowledge - many phenomena are exposed in Zhihu, many facts are clarified in Zhihu, and many sorrows and joys are understood in Zhihu. Because "people have the same heart, the same heart", we all have curiosity, and we all have empathy. Zhihu is not only a window for users to understand the world, but also a platform for users to give back to the world.

I believe that there will be more possibilities in the future of the community, between people and content, between people, there will be more connections and more value, which is what is happening.

Therefore, for users, the content of Zhihu is not only professional, but has a richer connotation. I conclude that quality content has three characteristics for users: "broadening horizons, bringing help, and resonating." All three are grouped under one concept, which we summarize as "sense of gain."

In May this year, we officially set "sense of gain" as a yardstick to measure the value of content, which is used to strengthen community governance and adjust the content structure, hoping to provide a larger and more benign stage and space for the production and consumption of good content.

"Sense of Gain" represents the user's most enthusiastic desire for quality content, with an extremely strong value potential. Let me give you a few examples to give you a deeper understanding of "sense of gain."

I believe that everyone still remembers the rains this summer. During the rainstorm, there was a copy of "Heavy Rain Self-Helper."

The Book was widely disseminated on the Internet. This manual was initiated by Zhen Haoyuan, the answerer. After seeing the news of the disaster at noon on July 20, he decided to use his rescue knowledge to compile a self-help manual to help those trapped in the disaster, including outdoors, community self-help, home self-help, enterprise and public self-help, public early warning and preparation and other information.

At about 4 p.m. on the same day, Zhen Haoyuan sent the content to Zhihu, and carried out a writing relay under the forwarding and comments of the friends, constantly improving and correcting the manual information. The manual was widely disseminated on the Internet, quickly receiving more than 30 million views, and was also reposted by various media outlets such as CCTV News.

Let me give you another example of the "college entrance examination".

Every year, tens of millions of people are inquiring about the college entrance examination volunteer filling problem, and the answer to the question "chenqin" a few years ago asked the question "Why do many people on the Internet say that there is no difference between ordinary one and two books, so why should I try to take one?" Below, the hard-core data quantification method is used to deduce how much the difference between one school and two schools is worth, and the changes that one school and two schools bring to life. This answer received 14,000 approval votes, answering questions for mathematicians and parents on the life event of the college entrance examination.

This year, this graphic answer content of "chenqin" was re-presented in the form of a video under the creative blessing of the "joint creation" function, vividly and vividly bringing a new "sense of gain" to the students on the issue of volunteering to fill in the college entrance examination.

Speaking of this, you may think: Zhihu uses "sense of gain" as a yardstick for quality content, but in fact, it redefines good content and gives the answer of Zhihu. But I want to tell you that "sense of acquisition" is related to another, more important question: is good content a good business?

The content subjects of knowledge are knowledge, experience and insight, all of which are related to information, but all provide higher value than information. Knowledge is structured information, experience is information that others have practiced, and opinions are logically thought-out information.

In the Zhihu community, the content is sorted by weighted voting, and we add people's professionalism and credibility.

In such an environment, good content with a "sense of gain" can generate more trust and follow-up actions. Whether it's reading, watching, or buying or subscribing, the real business value of content is to connect and generate action.

Here I would like to state that the views I share today are not only derived from thinking, but also from practice. Using the "sense of gain" to open up the value chain and promote the development of the industry, I know that I have made many successful attempts. For example, we rely on Q&A to know that we have opened up the IP closed-loop chain of "Q&A - Publishing - Film and Television", a large number of excellent literary works, some settled in the Zhihu Yan selection column, some into the book and film and television copyright development stage, and some have been adapted into TV series on the screen.

Zhihu's content ecology is also very suitable for the growth of young brands, and the exposure of The Zhihu platform has also become an important way for brands to gain recognition.

Airfly is a young domestic high-end hair care brand, they position their core users as "upward women". In the view of this brand, in addition to the function of content planting, Zhihu also has the functions of "search engine" and "judging consumption decisions".

Airfly launched its own hair dryer product this year, then launched a question on Zhihu, issued a crowd test invitation, provided free opportunities to experience the product, and then guided users to produce content to share the real product experience. For categories like Airfly, which have a strong decision-making cycle and high prices, the evaluation content on Zhihu is largely the last link to promote consumers to make purchase decisions.

The content crowdfunding initiated by Airfly has significantly improved in terms of product trial registration, topic popularity and conversion. Because of the popularity of the topic in the early stage, after the product card was provided in the product content, the sales volume of the designated model increased by four times from the previous month.

Therefore, in Zhihu, "sense of gain" is the core value of high-quality content, the "greatest common denominator" of users, enterprises, merchants, and industries, and it is also the cornerstone of the content industry and even the entire commercial society towards long-termism.

In the first decade of Zhihu's development, we are pleased to see that the community has grown from small to large, forming an open and healthy ecology, and we have also built a sustainable commercial value on the basis of ecological development.

With the help of the stage of the 36kr WISE Conference today, I would like to tell you that at the beginning of our second decade, Zhihu will start a super-long cycle of self-evolution with "sense of gain" as the core.

Zhihu is building a set of content creation systems that match the "sense of acquisition", and through technology and product innovation, let high-quality content interact benignly between different media, which is also an important deployment in the future strategic development of Zhihu. In the near future, you will see two major actions of Zhihu.

First, we will fully launch Zhihu 8.0. In the new version, we expect users to get a better experience in the two high-frequency scenarios of community interaction and time-sensitive content.

Community is the underlying logic of knowing. For ten years, from the Web to the mobile Internet, our product form has been evolving, and we have been exploring the ultimate form of community products. I don't know what it will eventually look like, but we've been working on it, and 8.0 is our latest attempt, code-named "Discovery Edition" internally.

With WISE Conference, I strongly recommend that you try the new version of Zhihu, you will feel a lot of changes. Here, also to give you a break, now our other "Easter egg" versions are also running, you can see if you hit.

Second, "Knowing that 2021" is coming. The annual inventory of Zhihu is both an agreement and a reunion. We will launch "Zhihu 2021" on December 15 to focus on "rediscovery", look back at the common memories of Zhihu and users in this year from multiple dimensions, review the evolution of the content community in a new way, and welcome the arrival of the next year.

I've always believed that community is not just a tool for users to help each other, but also a way to become intimate with each other. Today, hundreds of millions of users are learning from each other's world; millions of content creators are sharing knowledge, experiences, and insights; and thousands of organizations are building brands and reaping revenue.

The charm of the community lies in being open, so that the content has more value and imagination. I believe that "sense of gain" is both the common denominator and common direction of the development of the industry. We hope to do this well in the long run, as always, to create a new future for the content industry.