Zhihu, the largest question-and-answer site in China, has announced a public-facing encyclopedia editing plan, in an effort to better organize its answers on the site, which are often highly-fragmented, in a structural and systematic way.
The newly-launched plan allows approved individual users or organizations to create and edit articles on Zhihu Baike, or “Zhihu Encyclopedia” in Chinese, a section within the Zhihu.com platform with a collection of relevant questions and answers, the company said.
Users can also pick some lines from existing answers and recommend them as a supplement to certain articles. Zhihu will then review the edits, and the user’s profile will be shown on the page of those articles as a contributor.
Currently, Zhihu Baike has 4,091 articles covering fields ranging from science, nature, sports, society, and history.
Launched in 2011, the Beijing-based company started as an invitation-only Q&A site with a community of high-educated users. Over time, it has grown to be a central hub for Chinese users seeking professional knowledge and has gradually cultivated a reputation for being one of the country’s most trustworthy social media platforms.
As of 2019, Zhihu has 220 million users and its platform host more than 28 million questions and 130 million answers. According to research firm QuestMobile, it has over 48 million monthly active users (MAUs).
Previously, Zhihu snagged USD 434 million in a Series F round in August, led by short-form video and live-streaming app Kuaishou, with participation from Baidu. Its existing backers Tencent and CapitalToday also returned to this round.
Zhihu first reached a unicorn valuation in 2017 when it raised USD 100 million. Since then, the company has built out its two major income businesses: commercial advertizing and knowledge services.