China’s Quora and the Rise of a Top Content Community

How Zhihu Became China’s Go-To Platform for Knowledge and Discussion

Launched in 2011, Zhihu is the largest Q&A online community and one of the top five comprehensive online content communities in China, both in terms of average mobile MAUs and revenue in 2020, according to CIC.

Zhihu.com Homepage

Zhihu is also recognized as the most trustworthy online content community and widely regarded as offering the highest-quality content in China, according to the CIC Survey.

It prides itself as a “marketplace of answers,” steadily accumulating trustworthy content through continuous creation and engagement among users and content creators over a journey of more than ten years.

As of December 31, 2020, Zhihu had 43.1 million cumulative content creators, who had contributed 315.3 million questions and answers. Its 75.7 million average MAUs in the fourth quarter of 2020 generated 675.7 million average monthly interactions during the same period.

Though it's launched for 10 years but it is still in an early stage of monetization. Its average MAUs increased from 48.0 million in 2019 to 68.5 million in 2020.

It has adopted a content-centric monetization model and currently generates revenue from online advertising (62.4% of total revenues in 2020), paid membership (23.7%), content-commerce solutions (10%), and other new services (3.9%; primarily online education and e-commerce services).

Zhihu primarily charges display-based advertisements by cost-per-day (“CPD”) model and cost-per-mille (“CPM”) model, and primarily charge performance-based advertisements by cost-by-click (“CPC”) model.

Zhihu's revenue increased from RMB670.5 million in 2019 to RMB1.4 billion (US$207.2 million) in 2020. Its net loss decreased from RMB1.0 billion in 2019 to RMB517.6 million (US$79.3 million) in 2020.

Its average MAUs increased by 42.7% from 48.0 million in 2019 to 68.5 million in 2020.

The level of user engagement in our community is also increasing, according to Zhihu IPO prospectus. The number of its average monthly social interactions in 2020 increased by 42.0% compared to that in 2019, and the daily active users opened the Zhihu app an average of 6.2 times per day in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Its average monthly paying members increased significantly from 0.6 million in 2019 to 2.4 million in 2020, and our paying ratio increased from 1.2% to 3.4%. In addition, the growth of its user base and user engagement has attracted more merchants and brands to our community and increased their spending to pursue more effective branding and advertising.

In addition to online advertising and paid membership services, Zhihu formally launched content-commerce solutions in early 2020. It has also consistently explored additional content-centric monetization channels and added new revenue streams.

For example, in furtherance of its development of education vertical, Zhihu has launched an online education service in response to the high demand for educational resources of its users. It has added e-commerce service as part of its efforts to expand the vertical service coverage in response to the significant consumption of trustworthy content on product recommendation and evaluation in the community.

43.1% of Zhihu users are female as of December 2020. They also have a wide geographical coverage with 52.6% of users in tier 1 and new tier 1 and 21.2% of MAUs in tier 2 cities in China as of December 2020.

In addition, 78.7% of Zhihu's MAUs were under 30 years old in December 2020.

Users can leverage a series of features to engage actively within the community. Users can upvote and downvote answers and comments, which serve an instrumental role in our community interactions.

Users can also identify and invite other users to answer any question in the community. Other social interaction features include comments, private messages, likes, follows, favorites, and sharing.

Zhihu Content Operations

Zhihu uses an AI-powered question routing system to invite users to answer questions that correspond to their interests and expertise, to incite their desire to create.

It also offers productivity tools to help content creators efficiently produce quality content. It uses a feed recommendation system and a search system to distribute content of interest to users.

Users can browse their personalized home feeds on the Zhihu app and website based on their profiles and prior behaviors, as well as search keywords to quickly access relevant content.

In addition, users can see updates from content creators and topics that they have followed, read trending topics, watch videos, and browse channels to discover content.

Zhihu leverages TopicRank algorithms to assess the content based on analytical results of users’ credentials and engagement. As a result, users’ behavior ultimately determines the order by which content is presented.

Influential, reputable, and well-recognized users generally have more weight in the content assessment process. It uses big data analytics to study user interactions and other factors to refine its assessment of the appropriateness of any particular content and determine corresponding reactions.

To respond to inappropriate content, it uses AI-powered proprietary systems, such as WaLi, content-monitoring system, and WuKong, anti-spamming system.

Zhihu Founder

Zhou Yuan, Zhihu CEO

Its founder, chairman, and chief executive officer, Zhou Yuan, born in 1980 in Guizhou, is an entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in the internet and media industries.

Its shareholders include Tencent, Kuaishou, and Baidu.

As of December 31, 2020, Zhihu had 1,651 full-time employees, all of whom were based in China, primarily at our headquarters in Beijing, China.

China’s online content communities