“Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily”, June 12 (Reporter Huang Xinyi) Today, Zhihu released its performance report for the first quarter of 2024. According to financial reports, Zhihu's total revenue for the first quarter was 961 million yuan, down 3.3% year on year; net loss was 166 million yuan, down 7.4% from the same period last year; adjusted net loss was 136 million yuan, compared with a net loss of 120 million yuan for the same period last year; and Zhihu's average monthly active users (MAUs) for the first quarter was 89 million, with an average monthly subscription of 14.8 million subscribers.

Currently, Zhihu's revenue comes from four parts: marketing services, paid membership, vocational education, and others. Vocational education's Q1 revenue was 145 million, an increase of 35.9% over the previous year, accounting for more than 15% for the first time. Meanwhile, revenue from marketing services, paid memberships, and others declined.

Of this, revenue from marketing services was 305 million yuan, compared to 392.1 million yuan for the same period in 2023. According to Zhihu, the reduction was mainly due to increasing profit margins as a strategic focus, and the company has managed commercial content and distribution mechanisms. Paid membership revenue was RMB 449.7 million, compared to RMB 454.8 million for the same period in 2023. This decrease was mainly due to a decrease in the average number of monthly subscription members.

“Go to Zhihu, share the story you just made up with the world”. Zhihu CFO Wang Han responded to the joke made by the outside world over the years at the performance conference: “Some people regard the Zhihu story as a negative thing. But just like the New York Times has best-selling novels, the core issue is to display and distribute story content and non-story content separately to give users with different preferences a better experience.”

The original short story reading product “Yanyan Story App” previously launched by Zhihu is an experiment in this area. Wang Han said that its average monthly active users in the first quarter increased by 40% month-on-month, reaching millions. It can be said that the joke from the outside world seems to have become Zhihu's new lifesaver, and the story of Yan Yan is the key to whether Zhihu can balance paid reading with the community atmosphere.

In terms of the progress of the big model application, in March of this year, Zhihu released a beta version of “AI Search”. This function is based on the “Knowledge Chart AI” big model to implement search, real-time question and answer, and question tracking functions. Zhou Yuan, founder, chairman and CEO of Zhihu, said that this year's business focus will be on exploring large-scale model applications. At the end of June, a new version of AI search will be launched, which will be launched first on the PC. In the future, the combination of AI search and community ecology will be the focus of the product.

Zhihu's net loss narrowed in the first quarter of this year, but adjusted net loss is still expanding. At the previous annual report meeting, Zhou Yuan said that achieving profit has become the first key point of Zhihu's 2024 strategy, and the most important task is to optimize the cost and expense structure. At the Q1 results meeting, Wang Han once again reiterated Zhihu's profit target and is expected to achieve single-quarter non-GAAP (non-GAAP) profit in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Zhihu was founded in January 2011. The slogan at the time was “There is a problem, go to Zhihu”. Now, Zhihu's slogan has changed to “If you have a question, there will be an answer.” As for Zhihu's profit prospects, only Zhihu itself can answer.