China’s net users are happy to pay for answers to their questions

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When I need an answer to something, I usually ask my good friend Google. But in China, there are a plethora of other options. Aside from Quora copycat sites, there are an increasing number of paid question-and-answer services on the rise. Fenda, a WeChat-based app that allows users to pay to get their questions answered by celebrities, is the most prominent of these, but far from the only one. And a new survey conducted by the China Youth Daily hints at why.

The state-run newspaper surveyed over 2,000 people about their attitudes towards paid Q&A services, and if you’re the founder of a paid Q&A service, the results look great. The big number: a whopping 73.9 percent of respondents said they’d be willing to pay for an answer to a particular question.

73.9 percent of respondents said they’d be willing to pay for an answer

That’s not just hypothetical, either. Nearly as many respondents (66.3 percent) said they already had paid for Q&A services. 10.8 percent said they paid for such services frequently, and another 55.5 percent said they paid for Q&As at least occasionally.

Interestingly, most respondents also saw the rise of China’s paid Q&A culture as a positive thing. 59.5 percent of respondents said that they felt the “pay for knowledge” model will continue to develop, and that it helps spread the idea that knowledge has value through society.

What kind of knowledge is truly valuable is up for debate, of course. Thus far, some of the highest-paid questions on Fenda have been the equivalent of celebrity gossip: asking famous figures about their personal lives and even their sex lives. But there are paid services for more serious questions, like asking doctors about medical issues, too.

Can this grow beyond China?

China isn’t the only country with paid Q&A services, of course – there are a myriad companies attempting similar models across the globe, although none has quite reached the level of a platform like Fenda. Chinese platforms themselves are unlikely to make the jump across the Great Firewall – Fenda, for example, relies on WeChat, an app very few non-Chinese ever use. But it’s possible that the app’s ask-a-celebrity model could be copied in other markets to help increase the public knowledge and use of paid Q&A services, just as it has in China.