Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com August 10 news, this morning, Zhihu founder, chairman and CEO Zhou Yuan released an open letter saying that the average number of monthly paid members in the community exceeded 10 million in July, marking a new milestone in the commercialization of the company.

CTOnews.com learned that Zhou Yuan said that they started their business 12 years ago today (August 10, 2010) and officially launched Zhihu platform in January 2011.

According to the financial report, the average number of monthly active users (MAU) in Zhihu was 101.6 million in the first quarter of 2022, up 19.4 per cent from the same period last year, while the revenue from paid members was 222 million yuan, up 75.1 per cent from the same period last year.

The following is the full text of Zhihu CEO Zhou Yuan's open letter:

Hello, bosom friends.

Inadvertently, Zhihu company has been in business for 12 years. Bosom friends know that the community was launched on January 26, 2011, but we started our business 12 years ago today. Yes, we started to write code by putting together tables on August 10, 2010.

In a flash of 12 years, sometimes I think it's a long time, after all, my age has changed from 30 + to 40 years, but sometimes it feels very short, like the end of a beginning (the end of the beginning). I think for a startup, the end of the beginning starts a new journey called "midway". Halfway, it is not like climbing a mountain, knowing the coordinates and distance of the top of the mountain, but like sailing, knowing that you will sail farther after that.

8.10 is Day 1, which was started 12 years ago, and today, it is also the Day 1 of our company entering a new stage. As far as I am concerned, we should not only build Zhihu community into a trustworthy community in the hearts of bosom friends, but also redouble our efforts to make the company a good company recognized by the public as a good company that can make money. This means that the company should grow together with the community, with particular emphasis on "ecology first".

When we implement the "ecology first" strategy this year, we find that rhythm is very important all the time. In fact, to grasp the rhythm is to grasp the key points. Focus on the user experience, and take this as a benchmark to adjust the current growth strategy, especially pay attention to the commercial growth rate to match the community growth rate. The adjustment of rhythm will not be achieved overnight, but as long as we go in the right direction, we will go more steadily and go further.

Today, I would like to take this opportunity to tell you some good news. In July, the average number of monthly paid members of the community exceeded 10 million. This marks a new milestone in the commercialization of the company. But it means more than just business. Why would you say that?

Let me give you a brief review: Zhihu's membership business started in 2018, when it was called super members, and it was the salt-elected members launched in 2019 that really got back on track. The biggest change is that starting from the original experience of community Q & A, we upgraded the creators' paid works in Zhihu to "Salt selection column" and included the creators in the membership system. As a result, the emergence of a large number of "salt selection creators", through salt selection paid content creation to release the creative potential, individuals and platforms have achieved considerable commercial value.

Salt selection members hatched from the community, lost money at the initial stage, gradually became self-sufficient business, and then to the construction of the back-feeding community, recently began to contribute to the upcoming "Awareness Project" creation fund. This is really something we didn't think of in 2019. I believe that the changes that are taking place in the community ecology today will make the ecology more prosperous and powerful in the near future.

Thank you for your attention to Zhihu. We'll talk next time.

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