Zhihu CEO Zhou Yuan disclosed commercial progress: pay attention to "ecological first", and to be a company that can make money

Cover Journalist Ouyang Hongyu

On August 10, Zhihu founder, chairman and CEO Zhou Yuan published a letter of commercialization of commercialization. He said in the letter that it is necessary to build the company into a trusted community for users, but also to make the company a good company recognized by the public. "The commercialization of Zhihu has entered a new milestone, which means that the company must grow together with the community, especially paying attention to 'ecological first'."

Public information shows that Zhihu was founded on August 10, 2010 and returned to Hong Kong to go public in April this year. The first financial report after returning to Hong Kong shows that the net loss in the first quarter of 2022 was 614.3 million yuan, which was nearly 90 % from the same period last year. In various businesses, commercial solutions, paid members, and online advertising are the main business. The number of members has increased to 10 million in July this year.

Zhou Yuan announced the "ecological first" strategy in the station's letter. He believes that good ecology brings good content, and good content is good business. Under the "Ecological First" strategy, Zhihu will focus on the four major issues: creators' experience, content gain, good community atmosphere, and commercialization of community development rhythm.

For the content community or knowledge paid app, the number of paid members is the basis for its content business scale. A few days ago, the thinking of the IPO was suspended, and an important factor was that its main product "get" APP's number of newly added registered users and paid users had declined to varying degrees. Similarly, the Himalayan paid members who are on the eve of the IPO have a level of ten million. Affected by the user scale and the willingness to pay, the number of audio subscriptions cannot achieve the scale effect, which also indirectly leads to its disclosure in the prospectus disclosed in March this year. At present, it has a huge loss of 13 billion yuan.

At present, Zhihu is also facing the same expansion of users and losses. In this regard, Zhou Yuan said that the significance of the increase in the number of membership of the monthly salt is not only at business, but also reflects a microcosm of the membership of the membership of the membership of ecological development. "I believe that the changes that are happening in the community ecology today will also make the ecology more prosperous and strong in the near future."

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