March 26 was supposed to be the day to celebrate the first anniversary of the listing.
But a few days ago, a network rumor that it was going to abandon the video track and start a second wave of layoffs once again made the outside world cast a skeptical look at Zhihu.
You know, at this time, it has only been one month since zhihu was last rumored to be laid off.
What is even more lamentable is that in the fourth quarter and full year of 2021 financial report released by Zhihu on March 14, Zhou Yuan, chairman and CEO of Zhihu, also deliberately emphasized: "Our video strategy has proved to be effective, and it has taken the diversity of Zhihu content to a new level." ”
Obviously, in Zhou Yuan's heart, Zhihu video is still an indispensable part of the road to commercialization, and at the same time, it also needs more confidence and patience from the capital market.
But public opinion doesn't seem to buy it.
On the pulse of workplace social software, some users who claim to be insiders talk about the video department of Zhihu:
"It's not good to exert efforts in the graphic track, turn to the video business, and as a result, I lost my wife and folded my soldiers."
"The video is not well done, and I know that it is difficult to have room for growth."
……
Coinciding with these claims is that since last December, Zhihu has appeared in the Internet's sight with the word "layoffs" many times, and the video department is in the center of the storm without exception.
Although Zhihu has also responded to rumors of layoffs, saying that there is no layoff plan for the video business in the first half of the year, such news has been frequently reported, and anyone can see that this video business, which has been born in Zhihu for four years, is making the scarred Zhihu more and more heavy shackles on its back.
Knowing that the video has entered the countdown
The first to feel the countdown to Zhihu video is the creator of Zhihu video.
On March 21, Zhang Jiayi, who had just joined a WeChat group of Zhihu financial video creators in early March, took a lunch break and found himself moved out of the group chat by the group owner, the Zhihu video operation that had originally pulled him into the group.
Zhang Jia was very puzzled, obviously in the morning, other video creators in the group were still as usual, sending their own video links according to the requirements to ask for operation and promotion, and how the group was dissolved in the afternoon.
With questions, she carefully asked the operation, and the other party replied: "We adjust internally, and then build a new group will pull you in." ”
But more than an hour later, the other party suddenly threw a link that knew that he was going to give up the video track, and said that he was looking at a new opportunity.
At this time, it was only two months before the video operation invited Zhang Jia to join Zhihu Video.
In two months, she released 5 videos on Zhihu and only gained 29 fans, and the best traffic issue only had 20,000 plays and 4 comments, while the same content was placed on Douyin with 500,000 plays and thousands of comments, and there were 100,000 plays and 226 comments on B station.
"Knowing that video is dispensable for us video bloggers." Zhang Jia helplessly told AI Blue Media.
Obviously, even in the fourth year of Zhihu's all-out video, it is still difficult to compare with the heads.
This is also the embarrassing situation that Zhihu video faces.
In 2018, Zhihu has launched the video function, but it has been abandoned for nearly three years, until 2020, Zhihu once again remembered its own video business.
This time, Zhihu set up a special function bar for the video on the left side of the home page, and also regarded the video as his hope for flipping. To this end, Zhihu has spent hundreds of millions of yuan in cash to support the flow of various types of knowledge creators.
But the competition between the Internet for short video creators, especially intellectual creators, has stopped.
Whether it is Douyin Kuaishou or B Station Xiaohongshu, they not only have a traffic pool far beyond Zhihu, but also have always relied on video to fight the world, which is completely different from Zhihu's strategy of taking into account both graphics and text and competing for short videos, and their various traffic support and incentive plans for video creators are also more daring to spend heavy money and spend energy.
Looking down on the video track, it is not difficult to find that the short video track has become a red sea, and in recent years, the knowledge of starting to work on video has been later than many opponents from the beginning, which has created a situation that is now bluntly said by creators to be "dispensable".
On the other hand, Zhihu, who has been focusing on graphics business, has naturally attracted the dissatisfaction of users overnight.
In the Zhihu station, in the high praise of some users, "how to cancel the recommended video of Zhihu", "how to block the video", "how to look at the more and more video recommendations of Zhihu", many people directly expressed their dissatisfaction with the video, and the emotional excitement pointed directly to "Zhihu is losing its own graphic advantage", "Originally I came to know that I was looking for quiet, and I was pushed to turn off some videos that could not be turned off, obscure! ”
In the minds of users, the rush to make quick gains on the video has had the opposite effect.
The elite is no more, the internet is the way
In addition to the video not being optimistic, the root of zhihu, the graphic answer, has also lost its original appearance.
Once, the elite Q&A platform that "people just got off the plane in the United States" has now become an online text reader for "When I was sixteen years old, I happily married a eunuch" and "Did you hate your family for a moment?". Many users reported that every time the homepage was refreshed, at least one novel would be "disguised" as a question, standing at the top of the page in a dangling way, and could not be blocked no matter what.
It is enough to see the status of online novels in the knowledge of content now.
And online novels are also becoming an important part of Zhihu's paid content. Once the user is attracted by the title and content of the question, pulled to the end of the article, there will be "minimum 0.3 yuan / day to open a member, view the full content" words.
In the list of salt selections of Zhihu members, three commonly known romance novels, "Unconventional Love in Love with You: A Collection of Derailed Love Stories", "Urban Men and Women: I Must Forget You", and "What Bad Thoughts Can My Brother Have" ranked in the top three of the list.
Obviously, in order to commercialize, Knowing that it is no longer high and cold, Zhou Yuan has also chosen to break the filter of eliteization and exchange more sinking content for more traffic.
And the effect is also immediate.
According to the financial report, the revenue of Zhihu paid members in 2021 was 669 million yuan, an increase of 109.1% year-on-year, compared with 87.997 million yuan in 2019. In the past three years, the income of paid members has soared by 7.6 times, and the story network article is naturally indispensable.
However, in the current online content of Zhihu, there are still a large number of pornographic violence and murder and derailment and other undesirable content, these short-term "traffic passwords" for Zhihu to lay security risks at the same time, but also prove that Zhihu's online text is still in its infancy.
After extending the tentacles to the field of online literature, it is inevitable to compare with its peers.
As we all know, the situation of "one super and many strong" in domestic network articles has basically taken shape:
Reading at the top of the mountain, from the starting point Chinese network to Tencent Video, includes the entire industrial chain that may be covered by online IP; Jinjiang Literature City is also close behind, with a large number of loyal users; Tomato Novel is also backed by ByteDance, with strong strength and financial resources.
In addition, from the current market point of view, the commercial value of online text has been extended from the text itself to various adaptations of IP, knowing that if you want to break this pattern, from the hands of reading texts and other capital to compete for territory, it is as difficult as climbing the mountain.
Even so, I know that I can't be satisfied with the status quo, just let the online text become a way to make a profit, in order to tell a better story to the capital market, since the choice of "story", Zhou Yuan must also force himself to PK with other online text platforms.
The feeling of tearing with the user
At the 2018 World Internet Conference, Zhou Yuan once said: "The Internet does not need more traffic, but needs better quality." ”
However, in the past four years, Zhihu not only began to exchange quality for traffic for commercialization, but also gradually lost its unique foothold.
Almost all of the former Gaozan answers were replaced by commercial soft broadcasting, and changed his name and surname to become a "content business solution", which became a pillar industry of Zhihu. But the shift came too suddenly, making the platform much less interesting. During this period, the big Vs have left on several large scales, and alternatives in the industry have emerged in an endless stream.
Between the tears, it is becoming logical for users to escape from zhihu.
Some users said in their "retreat statement" that half of their retreat stemmed from platforms that flattered traffic, and on the other hand, they also stemmed from the users who broke the circle of those platforms and did not meet their "high standards".
In short, knowing can yield to capital, but users never bow their heads.
At the end of last year, Zhihu was interviewed by the Cyberspace Administration of Beijing because of "many times that information prohibited by laws and regulations from being published or transmitted" on the platform, and the relevant functions were rectified and shut down within a time limit, and many Zhihu users clapped their hands and applauded.
Obviously, there has been a clear sense of tearing between the commercial development of the platform and the users in its community, and the rapid commercialization has also made it possible to gradually worry about internal and external troubles.
Perhaps, it is a critical moment to stop and seriously consider the direction of commercialization.
(Source|.) AI Blue Media Collection Author| Yan Ye)