In recent years, payment for knowledge has become popular. 2016 is called the first year of payment for knowledge. After a period of brewing, platforms such as Get, Himalaya F, and Maker Artisan have achieved rapid development in this year. Major breakthroughs have been made in launch and product sales, which have also attracted widespread attention. In 2018, the wave of payment for knowledge continues. According to relevant statistics, China will reach 292 million paid knowledge users in 2018. From the perspective of industry dynamics, in the first half of 2018, the payment of knowledge distribution model appeared, the e-commerce of payment for knowledge was further advanced, the refinement of payment for knowledge was approaching, and consulting platforms were involved in the field of payment for knowledge. On the whole, payment for knowledge is advancing in exploration, and the development of the industry tends to be rational, with promising prospects.
1. Investigate the reasons for the rise of the knowledge payment model: The knowledge demand in the era of information explosion is the internal driving force of the knowledge payment model
The rise of the Internet has allowed mankind to enter the era of information explosion from the era of lack of information in just a few decades. Thinking back to the traditional society before the advent of the Internet, it was not easy for humans to acquire knowledge. Classics are as precious as treasures. "The legacy is full of gold, and it is better to have a classic." The invention of printing and the wide application of paper are a leap in communication technology, but they have gained more A lot of knowledge and education are still the privilege of a few people. The ancient Chinese tradition of "respect and cherish the writing paper" reflects the social psychology of the corresponding era; the rise of the Internet is a greater leap in communication technology, and everyone can access the Internet. There is a huge amount of information online. Compared with the era of information scarcity, the Internet provides great convenience, but it is far from reaching the stage of meeting people's needs. As the researcher pointed out, "Consumers have not yet enjoyed the'convenience of obtaining massive amounts of information', they immediately fall into the trap. Individuals have difficulty in processing information, and have difficulty in'choosing' the access path and method. Forget, we must also be especially careful to guard against those so-called "encyclopedia" content product suppliers who provide wrong, even fatal information without conscience." If information explosion reflects a sudden increase in the amount of information, information redundancy makes information receivers confused, and the term "trap" reflects the dangers that information receivers may face. In the Internet age, information recipients are not only bombarded by excessive information and tired of coping, but also encounter harmful information. Therefore, users need useful knowledge rather than complex information. However, it is not an easy task to efficiently and cost-effectively select knowledge from a large amount of information that varies from good to bad. This is the real pain point of users in the Internet age, the key to solving the knowledge anxiety in the Internet age, and the fundamental driving force for the rise of the wave of knowledge payment.
At the same time, we must also see that in the Internet age, people's needs and choices for knowledge are quite different from before. In the Internet age, people's learning methods are also advancing with the times, and the concepts of lifelong learning, general learning, and cross-industry learning are becoming popular. Luo Zhenyu has many incisive expositions on learning and knowledge: "The current knowledge is that I am not in this business, but I am willing to spend a little time to understand the top ideas of this industry. This is called cross-border general knowledge. Knowledge is in our generation. , The most important change is cross-border general knowledge... We are transforming from a knowledgeable farming nation to a knowledgeable nomadic nation.” Outside of school education, in professional work, people maintain a full interest in new knowledge and continue to Expand the scope of vision, update the knowledge reserve, and adapt to this fast-developing Internet era. In related studies, researchers also have a more comprehensive summary of what kind of knowledge users need in the Internet era: "(1) Specialized knowledge in a relatively scarce specialized field in the existing knowledge supply system. (2) Cross-border knowledge And method-based knowledge. (3) Services that reduce or reduce people’s time and effort to gain knowledge and enhance people’s understanding. (4) Personalized and tailored knowledge services. "Adequate and adequate in the Internet age Knowledge demand, and the corresponding need for choice, gave birth to the rise of the knowledge payment model.
2. Compared with the free model, the paid model is more conducive to the accurate acquisition and transmission of knowledge, and the knowledge-paid business model is more suitable for the needs of knowledge services
If the first keyword of the knowledge payment model is knowledge, then the second keyword is undoubtedly payment. The emergence and maturity of the free model originated from the rise of mass media such as newspapers and television. In the 1830s, the rise of the Penny newspaper meant the birth of the free model of newspapers. The essence of the Penny newspaper is that the buyer no longer needs to pay the full cost of the newspaper. The newspaper obtains readers’ attention by providing readers with free news. Resell the reader's attention to advertisers to obtain financial support from advertisers. Since then, the rise of television and the development of the Internet have adopted and developed this model. In the Internet era, user attention is counted and expressed as a term-traffic, and it has become the core pursuit of various Internet platforms. Because traffic means the concentration of user attention, but also means the investment of advertisers. What we need to pay attention to is that, for the first time, the Penny News truly made news replace speech as the protagonist of newspapers, and newspapers became newsprint to adapt to the free business model. Communication scientist Harold Innis said: "Inexpensive newspapers always rely on two things: one is technological progress, and the other is news. They use news as a means of propaganda-a propaganda means to advertise themselves. Because the newspaper itself is an advertising medium."
From a commercial point of view, the free model has huge advantages, but the dependence on advertisers also causes obvious problems for the media. "What is indispensable for expanding circulation, advertising and news sales is exciting news. People have an overwhelming interest in carnivals and excitement, and this interest is used for commercial gain." Advertisers and newspapers Publishers are more willing to stimulate readers' perceptual responses instead of triggering them to think rationally; they are more willing to cater to the tastes of the public rather than enhance their capabilities. Habermas pointed out that since the middle and late 19th century, popular newspapers have gradually replaced critical-conscious literary family magazines, at the expense of their political and public affairs content, to cater to the entertainment and leisure needs of consumer groups with lower levels of education. He quoted the term of the American communications scholar Schram, saying that immediate compensation news (such as corruption, accidents, disasters, comics, sports, entertainment, social news, and humanistic stories) constantly crowd out delayed compensation news (such as public affairs, social issues, economic events) , Education and health), “the criticism of the reading public gradually gave way to consumers'exchanging each other’s tastes and hobbies'”, so the cultural critical public became a cultural consumer public, that is, a manipulated public. In this way, the public domain of literature disappeared. Instead, it is the pseudo-public or pseudo-private sphere of cultural consumption. This change and characteristic reflects the "bias of communication" pointed out by Harold Innis: "After a long-term use of a medium, it may determine the characteristics of the knowledge it disseminates to a certain extent."
Information, information, pastime and entertainment are the main pursuits of readers/users in the free mode. When users are not for entertainment or pastime, but for knowledge, learning, and improvement, the free model is not conducive to satisfying the needs of users, nor can it solve the problem of motivation and return of knowledge service providers. After all, for two centuries, whether it is newspapers, television or the Internet, the free model has been so suitable for people's needs for real-time and shallow information, as well as for entertainment and recreation, and is not suitable for deep learning and knowledge. Therefore, the establishment of an efficient, direct, and accurate business model for users to obtain knowledge services-the knowledge payment model-should be taken seriously. Luo Zhenyu said: "In the past, advertising was regarded as the core profit model of the content industry, and traffic monetization has always been talked about by the media. But why can't we take a more direct path? Why can't we return to production-sales-profit. Direct merchant thinking? Packing knowledge services into products and selling them directly to users is the product thinking of "getting"." The payment model has found a more direct and more conducive business logic for knowledge acquisition for the Internet.
At the same time, the improvement and maturity of the Internet payment environment in recent years has also provided a strong guarantee for the payment model. Because payment also has a cost, if the user feels troublesome and inconvenient when purchasing a certain service or product, it means that the time cost or security cost of the payment is high, and the user will more likely to abandon the purchase. In recent years, the convenience, speed, and security of electronic payment have greatly reduced the cost of payment. Users often only need to click a few times on the mobile terminal to complete the payment and purchase. This is also a prerequisite for the smooth development of the direct payment business model.
3. The renaissance of hearing is the prominent feature and main form of this wave of payment for knowledge
We have noticed that payment for knowledge is a business model, and as far as the carrier of its knowledge content is concerned, it includes audio, video, text, and offline community activities. However, it must be emphasized that the mainstream of this wave of payment for knowledge is the payment of knowledge in the form of audio, and the main form is audio. This means the revival of hearing.
Among the human senses, vision is the main channel for receiving information, followed by hearing. In modern society, the importance of vision has been further strengthened. Since the advent of television to the boom of the Internet, human society has experienced a significant visual turn, or image turn. More scholars pointed out: "Images are not only ubiquitous-exist in any surface or in any medium, but also occupy a position before the'thing itself'; today's world can even be defined by'image first'. That is to say, the image is not only in time, but also in the ontological sense. It is before the reality." The emergence of the "visual turn" and the "spectacle society" has brought profound changes. The importance of obtaining information has increased. Eyes have become overwhelmed. More children wear myopic eyes. High-tech companies have introduced smart eyes to give glasses more functions that integrate viewing, capturing, storing, and recalling images. In contrast, the ears are much more idle, and people are still listening, but they are often absent-minded. The importance of hearing in the senses seems to be reduced.
At the end of 2016, “the Internet’s demographic dividend is over... It’s getting harder and harder to get traffic, and time will become the ultimate battlefield for business... There are two schools of business in the future: one is to addicted to him, and the other is to provide Serve and optimize his time." With the end of the Internet demographic dividend and the overall “national time” unchanged, how do people allocate their time? Some are addicted to entertainment, and some strive to optimize time allocation. For the latter In terms of time, the use of fragmented time, especially the full use of ears, has the value of optimizing time. Therefore, people who try to optimize their time try their best to play the role of their ears when driving a vehicle, while walking on the subway, or when they need to rest their eyes. Therefore, broadcasting has been marginalized since the rise of television, but audio has been reborn in various media such as car audio and music broadcasting stations, and audio has become the main media in the wave of knowledge payment. In the constant total time of life, people regain their hearing, optimize time allocation, and improve the quality of life.
The meaning of auditory revival is more than that. As a person as a whole, maintaining the balance of various senses is of great significance. Communication scholar McLuhan emphasized the influence of balance on individual perception. Starting from the concept of human sensory balance and overall coordinated development, he called for the return of hearing. In his view, the medium is an extension of the human senses. Hearing and vision are related and interact with each other. Only by maintaining the balance of the two can the balance of human senses be achieved. He divides human history from the perspective of media development, analyzes the relationship between vision and hearing in different historical periods, and divides the evolution of history into a tribal era dominated by oral communication, and a tribal era dominated by written communication. And the re-tribal era (global village), which is dominated by electronic communication, corresponds to the conversion of auditory space to visual space and the return to auditory space. In the re-tribal era, the return of auditory space emphasizes that no one sense organ is used to receive information, but the whole body's sense organs are used to receive information. Luo Zhenyu’s point of view echoes this: “There is a major difference between text language and natural language, and text civilization gradually loses its sense of object. The final result of audio expression is delivery, which is the most original way of communication for humans. Delivering knowledge with audio is the best way of broadcasting. An important breakthrough method.” In March 2017, Luo Ji's thinking was also completely revised, the format was changed from video to audio.
The balance of vision and hearing is also the balance of space and time. Sound flows in time and images are superimposed in space. Communication scholar Harold Innis believes that contemporary civilization has a serious spatial bias. He admired Greek civilization and believed that "Greek culture successfully solved the problem of time and space" and achieved a balance between the two. This is all due to the rich and powerful oral tradition of Greek civilization. This oral tradition is opposed to the mechanical tradition of modern civilization and can treat the extremely serious spatial bias problem in modern civilization. Therefore, the revival of hearing not only balances human perception, but also balances time and space, which is of great value to the development of civilization.
4. The essence of payment for knowledge is knowledge service
What are the characteristics of knowledge services?
First, a distinctive feature of the knowledge payment model is to provide knowledge, not entertainment. In fact, entertainment has always been easy and pleasant, and learning knowledge often requires persistence and hard work, and it requires rationality and perseverance to overcome the nature of human nature of likes and dislikes. Obtain the concept of persisting in lifelong learning, fragmented time learning, and cross-industry learning, and abandon entertainment. Therefore, it has grasped the pain points in the field of knowledge learning, so it can be done for a long time.
Secondly, under the premise of professional division of labor, consciously reconstructing the process of knowledge production and dissemination, and improving the quality of services with the help of the Internet and new media technologies are the salient features of the knowledge payment model. Knowledge service emphasizes the service function in the process of knowledge production and dissemination. Since the production and dissemination of knowledge, user thinking has always existed. Authors have to "speak" to potential readers, and publishing houses and other communication agencies should also analyze the audience. Strive to make the service satisfy the readers. But in the Internet age, people have the conditions to upgrade services, so the term knowledge service is used to emphasize service upgrades in knowledge production and dissemination. Luo Zhenyu said: "We often talk about the word "delivery" within the company, which means that in the development of human beings, the knowledge layer is actually based on the expresser, and the knowledge service we do is user-centric. From expression to delivery, not only must be spoken out, but also in people’s hearts...I am not a scholar, I am a new professional worker, called a knowledge server."
Finally, knowledge services emphasize professionalism, precision, and efficiency. "Professional" means that knowledge service is a specialized industry and occupational field, based on the division of labor in human industries. Any unprofessional behavior such as scrabbling and playing tricks cannot meet the needs and responses of the industry. market competition. "Accurate" means to have in-depth research on the audience and needs, which can effectively meet the individual needs of the audience. "Efficient" means that it can produce the greatest benefit in a limited time. It must be understood that time is life. From this perspective, we can also see that some platforms and applications are far from knowledge services because under the knowledge payment model, audiences need professional and accurate content provision and services, rather than spontaneous and automatic selection in the free model of the Internet era. Knowledge service should be PGC's knowledge production, professional knowledge production, not UGC, not user-generated content. Some commentators either emphasize knowledge redundancy, or emphasize spontaneity, or emphasize the mode of automatic screening of the content generated by the Internet. These are not in line with the knowledge service mode. Knowledge services require practitioners to produce, disseminate and serve knowledge professionally and efficiently, instead of letting users produce content autonomously and automatically filter content and disseminate content.
In short, the rise of the knowledge payment model is the exploration and practice of the upgrading of knowledge services in the Internet era. It will have a positive impact on the development of knowledge production and dissemination forms. It has broad prospects and deserves more attention.