【Reading Reaction #2】Zhihu, A Community for Helping Each Other

        Nowadays, people online prefer to get information from each other rather than gain them from traditional institutions. For online communities, sharing and communication are becoming more and more important than before. To pursue this groundswell, companies should try their best to understand and support their users. Zhihu, a Chinese question-and-answer website which may have similar functions as Quora, has already made it.

     Zhihu, which means “Do you know?” in Classical Chinese, was released to the public on January 26, 2011. Five years later, Zhihu already had 50 million registered users and the average daily active users amounted to 13 million. It had produced a total of 10 million questions, 34 million replies and 35 million approvals until May, 2016. In order to become attractive and successful, Zhihu pursues the groundswell by listening, energizing and supporting its users.

First of all, Zhihu uses different ways to get suggestions from its users for improvement. As what Liand Bernoff mentioned in their book about groundswell, companies should use the groundswell in order to better understand their customers. That was what Zhihu did. As a question-and-answer website, Zhihu has a function called “Personal Mail”, which allows users to send messages to each other on Zhihu.

And there is an official account called “Zhihu little steward” on its website. By sending personal mails to this official account, every user can ask questions and give suggestions to Zhihu officials. Zhihu also has its official account on Sina Weibo, a third party social networking site, which means it can get advises and reviews from third parties’ users as well. Zhihu also uses these official accounts to distribute questionnaires yearly in order to get comments from users. By getting feedback in different ways, Zhihu can seek customer insights and improve itself on time.
        What’s more, Zhihu also encourages users to participate more actively in community activities. According to Li and Bernoff’s book, companies should find their most enthusiastic customers and use the groundswell to supercharge them. Zhihu holds a monthly event called “Zhihu Round Table” which invites multiple experts to write answers to a carefully selected question. It also releases a weekly e-magazine called “Zhihu Weekly” to all the users.

Each issue of the magazine will have a special theme, which contains all the popular questions of the particular subject. And the answers which got most approvals will be edited and included in this magazine. By joining in these activities, users can not only get more information, but also show themselves and become well-known in this community.  Users whose answers have been edited to Zhihu Weekly will also get certain payments.

         Besides, as a question-and-answer website, Zhihu pays much attention to methods which can help users to support each other. All the questions in Zhihu are created, answered, edited and organized by the community of its users. If a user feels that there is something wrong with the description of a question, he or she can change it at any time, while other users can view the historical edition of this question.

Zhihu also has a voting mechanism as same as Quora. Users can vote for the answers which they think to be useful, and answers which got most approvals would stay at the top above all the answers.

By using the function called “Focus”, users can follow questions and other users they are interested in. The “Discover” function allows users to find the most popular questions containing the trending answers on the website. Users can also use the “Topic” function to collect recent contents from the topics that they follow.

Zhihu also designed a mobile app called “DuDu Daily” to allow users to personalize and recommend their favorite contents on Zhihu. By using this app, users can design a personalized magazine for themselves. All the methods Zhihu uses will help users to communicate and support with each other better.

     With the development of information technology, compared to the past, online users tend to get things they need from each other now. As a website aims to let users share, communicate and support each other, Zhihu understands the importance of listening, energizing and supporting users. By using different strategies, Zhihu knows how to pursue the groundswell and fit users’ needs. That is also why Zhihu became attractive and successful.

Hitchhikers' Guide To Zhihu (Chinese Ver.)

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【Reading Reaction #1】Sina Weibo: Who Pursues the Groumdswell Attracts More Users

As the information technology develops rapidly, people can draw more strength form individuals than before. Instead of getting things they need from companies, people nowadays prefer to get them from each other by the help of advanced technologies. This social trend can be called as the groundswell. Sina Weibo, a social media which followed the groundswell, has proved its value.

Sina Weibo is a social networking site which mainly provides Chinese microblogging service for its users, and “weibo” means “microblog” in Chinese. It was launched by Sina Corporation in August, 2009, and its users increased to 140 million by the end of the first quarter of 2011. By the third quarter of 2015, Sina Weibo has 222 million subscribers and 100 million daily users. What made Sina Weibo become so attractive? The answer is that it uses appropriate strategy to pursue the groundswell.

 

On the one hand, by offering different functions, Sina Weibo allows its users to better interact with each other. As a social networking site, Sina Weibo knows that its most important function is connecting. As what Charlene and Josh mentioned in theirbook “Groundswell: Winning in A World Transformed by Social Technologies”, a qualified social networking site should provide service such as profile maintainability and friendly interaction to its members, which may encourages its users to connect with each other more often. This is what Sina Weibo did. Users of Sina Weibo can create their personal profiles when they first register this site, and these profiles can be edited at any time. By checking others’ profiles, it is easy to find people who associated with you or strangers who have same interests with you. Their posts will appear on your “Home Page” of your Sina Weibo as soon as you clicked their “Focus” button. Sina Weibo also allows its users to upload different materials such as text messages, audios, music, saved pictures, emoji, GIFs, links, websites and short videos, which can help them to express their opinions and experience more vividly. Users can even add their own comments when quoting and sharing others’ posts. Sina Weibo also offers hashtag service to its users. While submitting their posts, users can create a hashtag to emphasize the topic of their posts. By searching posts with hashtags, users can find out information and opinions which have strong connections to current hot topics and live events easily. All these services Sina Weibo provides can make their users to communicate with others better and more convenient.

On the other hand, Sina Weibo also tries its best to improve its service in order to fits the users’ needs. Sina Weibo has an official custom service micro-blog account on its site called “Sina Custom Service”. It usually posts the latest improvement and introduces new functions of Sina Weibo on its home page. Users can also send their questions to this official account and get useful answers as soon as possible by using the “personal message” function. In February 2016, after collected several feedbacks, Sina Weibo removed its 140-character limit and allowed users to post up to 2000 characters in length. This new improvement really surprised lots of users and received the user's welcome immediately, which meant that they can add more contents in their posts. By listening to its customers and using innovation strategies on time, Sina Weibo attracts more users step by step.

As time passing by, people can get more information from each other, and the power of online users should not be ignored. Sina Weibo figured this out immediately and used strategies on time, which made it became more attractive. In this era, social media who pursues the groundswell may attract more users. Sina Weibo is a good example.