Over the past year, intellectual anxiety no longer seems to be a haze hanging over young people. Anxiety, on the contrary, is gradually forcing players in the knowledge payment industry.
According to titanium media reports, on February 11, there were media reports that according to netizens, Zhihu was laying off employees in a low-key manner, mainly video-related departments, almost half of them.
In the face of this rumor, Zhihu said that video is an indispensable part of Zhihu's content ecology, and the 2022 conference will continue to exert efforts in the field of video and continuously improve.
Although Zhihu denied the rumors of layoffs, if you look at the knowledge payment industry, you will find that the anxiety and pressure of making money have come to the gang that once sold knowledge to pay.
In 2022, it seems that paying for knowledge has become difficult to "sell" anxiety.
Knowledge paid not to be a "friend"
There has always been a saying in the knowledge payment industry, Fan Deng, Luo Zhenyu, Wu Xiaobo and Li Shanyou are known as the "four kings of knowledge payment".
But at the beginning of 2022, Luo Zhenyu, one of the Four Heavenly Kings, suffered a bad situation. On the last day of 2021, "Luo Tianwang" faced 12,000 empty seats and held a conference with the theme of "I can still do this!" " year-end summary.
A few days ago, because of the possible impact of the epidemic, Luo Zhenyu's 2022 "Friends of Time" New Year's Eve speech cancelled the audience's entry and instead switched to online live broadcasting. According to the previous ticket revenue, Luo Zhenyu's loss is about 10 million yuan.
Although the epidemic is the main reason for the cancellation of the speech, if you pull the long line, you will find that Luo Zhenyu's "chicken soup" seems to be no longer liked by people.
Once, after Luo Zhenyu's speech, listeners would write down "after listening" in the circle of friends. Today, this annual knowledge feast is not even as hot as the previous refund news.
Everything seems to imply that the intellectual anxiety that Luo Zhenyu "preached" is becoming their own "anxiety."
This can also be obtained from Luo Zhenyu's speech this year. For example, in response to the topic of "35-year-old crisis", Luo Zhenyu answered in his speech: "At the age of 35, you should not take a standardized resume to seek employment everywhere, you should have those soft powers that others can't tell you, such as connections, so that work comes directly to you." ”
To use the buzzword of the moment, this is simply a "model" of nonsense literature. For most anxious 35-year-olds, this sentence seems to only bring them more anxiety.
After all, after so many years, Luo Zhenyu, who calls himself a knowledge porter, seems to have been unable to move too many things out. So Luo Zhenyu positively warned the audience that starting a business is risky and should not start a business. Behind the scenes, the "thinking creation" was first established, and then the knowledge payment platform was launched to "get".
Luo Zhenyu has long forgotten his self-designation as a "knowledge porter", but chooses to transform his existing influence into a platform, relying on "empowering" others to find new opportunities.
However, facts have proved that no one can escape the decline of the knowledge payment environment. The number of new paying users who get apps fell from 1.65 million in 2018 to 830,000 in 2020.
At the same time, on the day of announcing the refund of the "Friend of Time" speech, Thinking Creation completed the financial information update and continued to wait on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange for the listing review that seemed to be far away.
Videos may or may not be opportunities
Luo Zhenyu's defeat is not entirely the shrinking of the knowledge payment market, but also closely related to his failure to seize the opportunity of short video.
In 2017, when short video platforms such as Douyin Kuaishou began to rise, Luo Zhenyu, who was in the middle of the day, turned his "logical thinking" into an APP solo broadcast, and turned the video into audio, perfectly "dodging" the short video outlet.
Subsequently, B station, vibrato, kuaishou, Zhihu, all kinds of free graphic and video knowledge, constantly dismembering Luo Zhenyu's knowledge paid territory. Video has become the mainstream trend in the knowledge payment industry.
According to the "Curiosity" 2.0 Era - 2021 China Pan-Knowledge Payment Industry Report released by Judian Arithmetic and Chuangbang, in recent years, the market size of China's pan-knowledge payment industry has maintained an increase of more than 40%. Among them, "short video + live broadcast" has become one of the most popular mainstream positions, with more than 70% of users learning through short videos.
The "Report" also mentioned that the number of users who obtained pan-knowledge payment related information and learned on the short video port accounted for the highest proportion, accounting for about 73.7%. It is followed by medium- and long-term video, about 35.3%, live broadcast and text-only materials account for about 30%, and there are fewer choices of picture information and audio.
As the most important communication carrier today, short videos are indeed particularly suitable for pan-knowledge dissemination. As a result, major content platforms have accelerated the layout of knowledge videos.
· According to public data, as of June 2021, there were more than 320,000 knowledge creators with more than 10,000 fans on Douyin, and more than 150 million knowledge videos published;
· Not to be outdone, Kuaishou shows in the "2021 Kuaishou Content Ecology Semi-annual Report" that the Kuaishou platform can not grow rapidly with pan-knowledge videos;
· This is the B station of the video content community, and the number of pan-knowledge content video playback accounts for 45%;
· Zhihu, which is known as the "first share of knowledge payment", is backed by the community ecology of graphic knowledge content, and has become the target of many knowledge paying players.
Probably the vast majority of people think that in the above platforms, there are great opportunities for short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou. It cannot be denied that these platforms have traffic advantages in the field of video, and station B, which is also a video platform, has also run out of the model of paying for video knowledge.
However, from a rational point of view, the medium video attribute of Station B still has its advantages as a carrier of knowledge payment. Because the users of Station B are mainly young user groups, they have a natural curiosity about new things and knowledge, which is essentially consistent with the needs of knowledge payment, and the attributes of the video itself can carry more knowledge signals.
In addition, Zhihu also has the potential to become a dark horse in the payment of video knowledge. After all, Zhihu itself is defined as an original content platform where high-quality Q&A communities and creators gather, and this image has been perceived by users for a long time, and in the eyes of the outside world, Zhihu has formed a gathering place where all kinds of knowledge can be obtained.
Then, Zhihu can realize the reuse of knowledge content based on the existing content ecology, whether it is to videoify the existing content or do the knowledge video business alone, it can be said that Zhihu has the advantage of knowledge content. If we can make good use of the synergy between video and Zhihu's own content ecology, then the potential of Zhihu's video business is still worth looking forward to.
When Luo Zhenyu is still asking the audience to spend thousands of yuan to grab the speech seat, the new generation of young people no longer seem to believe in that set, they are more willing to brush zhihu, pay attention to the UP master of the B station, or play vibrato in their leisure time. These free pan-knowledge content are crushing the false impact of knowledge payment.
However, even if it is a short video of pan-knowledge content, it is difficult to ignore the "anxiety" itself. It is true that free can help the platform to grab users in the knowledge content market where the traffic dividend has disappeared to a certain extent, but after all, free can not last long, for the platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou and Zhihu, the "anxiety" of making money will always accompany all knowledge content players.
Even so, running forward is the only way for all players in the knowledge content track. Nowadays, traditional knowledge payment based on audio, graphics and text seems to be no longer as sought after as it was originally, but knowledge payment 2.0 with short videos as the carrier has entered the warm spring with the arrival of 2022.
Today's knowledge payment is like wave after wave of "waves", the front wave has been flattened, and the back wave has risen again. With the continuous progress of human beings, knowledge as the most important existence, this ensuing "anxiety" may also carry the business of knowledge payment all the way.