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Spring Festival is coming... so are the new tricks of Chinese apps

Zijing Fu

posted on January 27, 2022 8:32 pmEditor : Wang Boyuan

Ever since WeChat Pay revolutionized traditional red pockets in 2014, Spring Festival have become a special playground for Chinese internet companies to connect with its users. Apps, including Alipay, WeChat and Douyin, have all rolled out new functions this year to attract users during the Spring Festival.

WeChat Channels, the short video streaming platform inside WeChat, announced that it will host a “Spring Festival Gala for Gamers”, in addition to live-streaming the official Spring Festival Gala by CCTV.

From January 23 to February 10, WeChat Channel will host the "Spring Festival Gala for Gamers“. The event will include popular mobile games in China such as “Honor of Kings”, “Game for Pease(PUBG mobile)”, “Call of Duty mobile”, “Genshin Impact”, "League of Legends mobile”, “Moonlight Blade mobile”, “Cross Fire mobile”, “QQ Speed” and others. Users can enter the event by searching “Shake for Wishes”(摇心愿) on WeChat and shake their mobile devices to get the rare benefits of participating games. From January 25 to February 9, the participating games will also launch special tasks. Users will have a chance to get cash rewards for sharing games on their WeChat Channel.

In addition, for 4 days in a row, there will be celebrity guests such as famous actor Wang Baoqiang and stand up comedian Hulan to participate in funny skits, games, NPC runway shows and livestream on WeChat Channel.

WeChat Channel’s “Spring Festival for Gamers” will be its first big move in 2022, briefly after it discussed WeChat Channel’s future in WeChat Open Class. WeChat Channels has long been a less popular short video streaming platform comparing to Douyin and Kuaishou. According to data compiled by Aladin Research, a third party research agency, WeChat Channels has accumulated over 300 million DAU during the first half of 2021, while Douyin has accumulated 500 million DAU as of September 2021, and Douyin Lite has a DAU of 150 million.

WeChat Channel has long been seen as having an unclear path to monetization, as well as dominated by users of older ages. It’s “Spring Festival for Gamers” will likely attract more young users, while the livestream and game-related activities will likely showcase monetizing possibilities.

Douyin has also announced its Spring Festival celebration plans: free movies, VR filters and cash rewards. Starting February 1, “My Country, My Parents”, a commemorative movie dedicated to the 72nd anniversary of the establishment of the People's Republic of China, will be available for free to view in Douyin and two other Byte Dance apps.

For those who prefer cash rather than free movie, Douyin also has a “card gathering” event, distributing 700 million yuan among users. “Card gathering” is a lottery-like mechanism popularized by Alipay’s Jiwufu event. Instead of buying lottery tickets, users need to collect digital cards in order to enter the poll and win cash. In Douyin’s card gathering event, the cash reward amount largely depends on luck, except for the first 2022 users who successfully collect all cards can get a special red pocket worthing up to 10000 yuan.

Alipay has also innovated its Jiwufu tradition, as PingWest has previously reported. This year’s Jiwufu is embracing the much-hyped NFT technology. For 2022, the year of the tiger, Alipay is collaborating with museums to roll out NFT fortune cards, inspired by tiger-themed artifacts. Users would have the opportunity to get museums’ tiger-themed fortune cards by scanning fu in the “collecting the five bliss” process. After users have collected all five blisses, they can also use the extra bliss cards to exchange for NFT fortune cards.

At the time of writing, Over 100 million users have collected all five fortune cards.
At the time of writing, Over 100 million users have collected all five fortune cards.

Kuaishou has also adopted the “Card gathering” mechanism, and is announcing it will distribute 2.2 billion yuan among users who collected all the cards. In addition to card collecting, there are also a series of complicated games such as “Guard Your Lucky Money”.  Upon entering the game, users would automatically receive random amounts of money to guard. Users need to invite new users to get cannons in order to fend off Nian Monsters, a creature derived from Chinese mythology. Without cannons, each Nian Monster would eat up the remaining money.

Comparing to all the apps trying to attract users by giving out money, LeTV, a video streaming app, is taking a different approach in order to get users’ attention. Instead of updating its logo to include the amount of money it is distributing like the others, LeTV’s app logo now says “can’t afford to share”(分不起).

Cover Photo by Yuwei Shaw on Unsplash