Zhihu spending billions to expand services

Zhihu, an online question-and-answer website, plans to invest billions of yuan to support content providers, company officials said on Thursday.

The investment is expected to help Zhihu boost paid knowledge-sharing services and develop more video content.

"Content contributors deserve more," said Zhou Yuan, Zhihu’s founder and chief executive officer. "The company plans to build a new ecosystem to support them with this investment."

Founded in 2011, Zhihu has about 240 million answers to 44 million questions with 20 million new items created every day. They include various subjects like “how to choose an OLED TV” and “how to fall asleep quickly."

The company has 2.5 million paid users for lectures and columns created by professionals and key opinion leaders.

It plans to expand video content services this year.

Compared with free mini videos offered by Douyin and Kuaishou, longer informational videos are projected to boom in China, generating income for creators and websites like Zhihu and Bilibili.

"Middle-class people in big Chinese cities are willing to pay for this type of video content," said Liu Zhijing, Internet and media analyst at UBS.