(Yicai Global) Nov. 23 -- Shares of Chinese Quora-like platform Zhihu jumped after the firm said its monthly active users exceeded 100 million for the first time ever in the third quarter amid its content marketing push.

Zhihu's US-listed stock price [NYSE: ZH] soared as much as 8.7 percent to USD8.60 intraday yesterday. The shares closed 3.9 percent higher and were 0.4 percent up in after-hours trading. The tech firm listed its equity on the New York Stock Exchange last March, raising USD523 million.

MAUs grew 40 percent to 101.2 million in the quarter ended September, the Beijing-based software developer said in its earnings report published before the US market opened yesterday.

Revenue more than doubled to CNY823.5 million (USD127.8 million) in the quarter from a year ago amid rising monetization, according to the report.

Going forward, income should increase. In the fourth quarter, Zhihu expects its revenue to jump to a point between CNY1.01 billion and CNY1.03 billion (at least USD158.2 million).

But in the previous quarter, deficit expansion was even quicker than revenue growth. Net loss expanded by 145 percent to CNY269.8 million in the third quarter from a year ago. The sum was still 16 percent less than in the second quarter.

The reason behind the deepening loss is increased costs. Spend on core business soared by almost 145 percent to CNY398.6 million due to widened advertising and content-related costs. Moreover, the enlarging user traffic resulted in increases in cloud services and bandwidth costs, the firm added.

Content-led commerce is driving sales. Income of the company’s content commerce solutions rose by more than six times in the three months from a year earlier, Chief Executive Zhou Yuan said during an earnings call. The question-and-answer platform offers content-based online marketing plans for merchants.

Zhihu is going deeper into online retail. “Zhihu’s e-commerce model is constantly being explored and evolved to maximize the efficiency of monetization through measures, including exploring the establishment of a self-operated e-commerce platform in the community,” said Zhou.

Editor: Dou Shicong, Emmi Laine, Xiao Yi