(Chinese Version)

Although the craze for Pokemon Go has died down, the AR interaction model it created has been constantly imitated and adopted by other developers.

On December 22nd, Alibaba announced that it would promote “AR Red Envelope” during the upcoming Spring Festival and turn the “Red Envelope battlefield” from online to offline.

“AR Red Envelope” is the combination of three elements: LBS, AR and red envelope. To collect an “AR Red Envelope”, users have to both reach a certain offline destination and scan the “designated object”. “AR Red Envelope” is also divided into two types: “individual to individual” and “shop owner to individual”.

Alibaba has already added the new function to Alipay at five o’clock PM yesterday, and users can find the new function “AR Red Envelope” by opening Alipay and click “Red Envelope” button.

More specifically, users can open Alipay, click “Red Envelope” button, choose “AR Red Envelope” and click “Hide an AR Envelope”. Next, users are supposed to fill the information such as location, clue, red envelope quantity, recipient, etc. to set up an “AR Red Envelope”. After that, users can share their “AR Red Envelope” with their friends through social platforms such as Alipay, WeChat and QQ, so that they can collect the “AR Red Envelope” based on the information set up beforehand.

Alipay's AR Red Envelope

This is basically how “individual to individual” AR Red Envelope works. As for “shop owner to individual” AR Red Envelope, shop owners have to apply to Alipay and then set up their own AR Red Envelope, containing whether vouchers or discount coupons.

According to Ling Long, head of Alipay’s AR Red Envelope, this will become a natural way to help shop owners attract traffic. For example, by setting up an AR Red Envelope with the restaurant’s location and logo as the clue, Alipay users may be attracted to come to the restaurant, collect the AR Red Envelope and have lunch or dinner.

To collect both types of AR Red Envelope, users have to 1) be 500 meters away from the AR Red Envelope; 2) find the “object” shown in the “clue picture” and scan it with Alipay.

Alipay can get “clue pictures” for AR Red Envelope not only from friends and relatives, but also see shop owners’ “AR Red Envelope” as well as other users’ “AR Red Envelop” that is open for anyone to collect.

As of press time, we’ve found that there are already lots of AR Red Envelopes set up by shops and restaurants’ or individual users, though the majority are still set up by shop owners.

So we give it a try and collect some AR Red Envelope from some surrounding shops, including a dumplings restaurant.

However, all we think about is collecting AR Red Envelope, so we didn’t have any dumplings and start looking for the next AR Red Envelope.

We don’t know if AR Red Envelope will become popular, but we do know that it creates an opportunity for Alipay users to meet and make friends with "tuhao" nearby – which can be loosely translated into "nouveau riche".

For young people who used to be crazy about PokemonGo, social interaction with their friends matters more than shop owners’ AR Red Envelope.

It is reported that brands such as Coca Cola, P&G, UNIQOL, Ele, etc. have already participated in the “game”. According to Ling Long, Alipay won’t emphasize much on “Red Envelope Battle” during the upcoming Spring Festival and they don’t expect any business growth through AR Red Envelope. Instead, they developed AR Red Envelope just for fun.

It is worth noticing that although Alipay’s Red Envelope activity “Collecting Five Blessing” during last Spring Festival encouraged much social interaction, Alipay fail to keep these interactions. Instead, many users felt as if being cheated since it’s too difficult to collect all the “Five Blessings” and receive Alibaba’s red envelope. Therefore, Alipay shifts its focus on offline channels this year and concentrates on helping shop owners attract traffic.

This also coincides with Alibaba’s shift to offline recently. For example, during Double Twelve festival for the past few years, Alipay all decided to launch marketing activities through its takeaway booking platform Koubei.

However, it is still interesting that both Alipay and Tencent have turned their attention to AR this year and Red Envelope has already been a battleground between Alipay and WeChat.

Collecting Red Envelop like Grabbing Pikachu in Pokemon Go (Click the left button to hide an AR Red Envelope, and the right one to collect an AR Red Envelope)

During an internal business fair of QQ this November, QQ Red Envelope’s head revealed to TMTpost that QQ would also adopt AR interaction in its Red Envelope

We find that QQ might come up with such idea through the “AR Torch Relay” during this year’s Rio Olympics. According to Tencent’s Q3 financial report, over 100 million users participated in QQ AR Torch Relay. However, we haven’t heard any news that WeChat is going to do something similar yet.

During last Spring Festival, over 8 billion WeChat Red Envelopes was sent on New Year’s Eve, 790,000 Alipay users who collected all the “Five Blessings” shared 215 million RMB together, while 2.234 billion Red Envelopes were sent through QQ.

During last Spring Festival, you might be sitting at home and collecting Red Envelopes. However, it seems that many people will go outdoors to collect “AR Red Envelope” this year.

By the way, we’ve also hidden an AR Red Envelope at TMTpost’s office building near Hujialou, Beijing. If you are around, be sure to drop by and collect our AR Red Envelope.

……………………………

(Like our Facebook page and follow us now on Twitter @tmtpostenglish, on Medium @TMTpost, on Instagram @tmtpost_english and on Apple News@TMTpost)

[The article is published and edited with authorization from the author @Han Pei, please note source and hyperlink when reproduce.]

Translated by Levin Feng (Senior Translator at PAGE TO PAGE), working for TMTpost.