In the announcement that just came out, WeChat officially stated that we have recently issued the "Announcement on Combating Third-Party Violations" to crack down on excessive marketing, induced sharing and other violations that broke out with the Spring Festival as the theme. In this context, we have received feedback and complaints from users about Yuanbao. Its related Spring Festival marketing activities include scenarios such as inducing users to frequently share links to WeChat groups through "doing tasks" and "receiving red envelopes", interfering with the ecological order of the platform, affecting user experience, and causing harassment to users.
After research and judgment, Yuanbao’s illegal links were dealt with and restricted from being opened directly in WeChat. Relevant disposal measures will take effect immediately. We will continue to pay attention to the operation of various Spring Festival marketing activities, combine user feedback, and ensure user experience in accordance with platform rules.
WeChat public relations director @微信禾妰 posted: "User experience comes first, treat everyone equally." He also added an emoticon saying, "I'll beat myself up if I go crazy."
Yuanbao responded that it is urgently optimizing and adjusting the sharing mechanism and will go online as soon as possible to ensure users’ experience in grabbing red envelopes.
After the news came out, Tencent's stock price fell 3%.
On January 25, Tencent officially released the "Notice on Distributing 1 Billion Cash in Cash During the Spring Festival": During the Spring Festival event on February 1, users can use the Yuanbao App to receive 1 billion yuan in cash red envelopes, and the amount of a single red envelope can reach 10,000 yuan.
On the afternoon of January 26, Tencent held its 2025 annual employee meeting. Ma Huateng, chairman and CEO of Tencent, said that Yuanbao hopes to convert the saved marketing expenses into red envelopes for users to share, allowing users to relive the joy of grabbing red envelopes in the past.
Ma Huateng expressed the hope that this move can recreate the WeChat red envelope moment 11 years ago.