In a recent event, Charles Zhang presented the product positioning, content ecosystem, and future plans for Sohu Video's Guanzhuliu (Follow Feed), and pushed back against outside claims that he has been "lying flat." He said that he gets up early every day and works long hours, and that his physics and English classes are both personal interests and a way to promote Guanzhuliu livestreaming and the content ecosystem. He stressed that Sohu has not been lying flat and that Guanzhuliu is a strategic-level product. He revealed that Sohu has $1.2 billion in cash on its books. In response to investors' inquiries about the use of funds and dividends, he said that funds still need to be invested in developing the social platform, and there is still a battle to fight. Currently, Sohu is putting more resources into polishing Guanzhuliu's product, expanding users, and operating offline events. He believes that once the platform grows larger, profitability will come naturally, and that building a high-quality product is not contradictory to creating long-term value for shareholders. He introduced the functional design of Guanzhuliu and pointed out that the core of its model is that users follow both content and content publishers. He summarized the model as "making friends through video" and described Guanzhuliu as a semi-open circle of friends that allows users to form sustained social relationships around shared interests.
