Song He/Wen
From the beginning of the month, the Yuanbao red envelope links spread wildly across major WeChat groups and Moments, to now when WeChat officially announced the ban on external links directing to Yuanbao, the entire process took just four days.
Tencent's internal divisions and fluctuations were first genuinely perceived by the outside world in the form of changes in product strategy.
The mobilization was too full, the changes too rapid, and the rhythm too complete, leading many users to begin to doubt whether this was a pre-planned script by Tencent to direct traffic to Yuanbao.
In this script hypothesis, Tencent boldly used WeChat to direct traffic, and once the rapid red envelope effect allowed Yuanbao user data to grow to a stage target, it urgently called a halt and reappeared as &#34;respecting user experience&#34; with WeChat.
In fact, viewing this conspiracy theory within a giant machine like Tencent, the speculation of a &#34;script theory&#34; may overestimate the flexibility of this internet giant's organization.
Tencent is not a company suited for acting; it is more like a machine operating in partitions.
On one side is the expectation for growth. The window period is short, the AI entry must be seized, and whatever can be pulled is pulled. Red envelopes, fission, and social chains are the fastest ways to see results;
On the other side is the adherence to platform value. WeChat groups are infrastructure, a mix of work, family, and life spaces. Once invaded by marketing mechanisms for a long time, it is not just one product that suffers, but the sense of order of the entire network.
These two sets of logic are not on the same track. Therefore, this time's &#34;release for a few days, then ban&#34; is less of a plot twist and more of a change of one foot on the gas pedal and the other on the brake.
If this is a script, then the coordination costs would be outrageously high. Growth, product, platform governance, risk control, legal affairs, public relations must reach the same tacit understanding at the same time on the same matter.
How much to release, for how long, when to retract, how to explain, all must be arranged in advance.
If this complex coordination only results in a volume boost for a new product, then this calculation is extremely risky and not cost-effective for a platform that relies on stability and trust.
A more realistic possibility is that the organizational machine is indecisive when facing different goals.
The first half of WeChat directing traffic to Yuanbao was about seizing position; the second half of WeChat banning Yuanbao links was about correcting mistakes; this is more likely not a well-designed plot twist, but a strategic wobble that went wrong.
Before the Spring Festival, the information density on social platforms often increases, and the traffic fission efficiency brought by links naturally amplifies. Yuanbao naturally wants to seize this window; otherwise, the marginal benefits of directing traffic will be affected. However, at the same time, group spamming, complaints, and negative sentiments began to become the main contradictions, and WeChat naturally could not sit idly by.
From directing traffic to banning, it is Tencent's rebalancing between the Yuanbao activation curve and WeChat's order costs.
Many of WeChat's and even Tencent's innovations have had similar cases, such as mini-games, induced sharing, marketing plugins, and external tools. They have mostly traversed the same river—first letting the market run for a while, waiting for scale and risks to emerge, and then uniformly setting boundaries and rules
This is more like Tencent's immune system that promotes horse racing innovation and respects user culture, rather than a director system that has a pre-planned plot conflict.
The key to this Yuanbao diversion is why it is willing to let this conflict occur on WeChat, a &#34;system-level platform,&#34; which itself proves Tencent's great expectations for Yuanbao.
In the past, WeChat was the most tightly protected place, and its growth logic was rarely allowed at the expense of WeChat's interests.
This time, the urgency of the AI entry has made growth demand the main contradiction, but even a few days of user disturbance may have a somewhat counterproductive impact on WeChat's image.
On the first trading day after the Yuanbao marketing launch, Tencent's stock price suffered a long-awaited blow, with many opinions attributing the reason to a &#34;black swan similar to the adjustment of telecom tax items possibly shifting to social, gaming, and other fields,&#34; but whether there are long-term shareholders feeling a &#34;rapid switch in user logic&#34; due to Tencent's promotion of Yuanbao, leading to a wait-and-see attitude, remains unknown in the market.
Objectively, as a super platform of the simplified Chinese internet, WeChat has genuinely swayed in this round of the AI entry war.
So rather than saying this is a &#34;Zhou Yu hitting Huang Gai&#34; planned story, it is more likely an external expression of an internal divergence within Tencent amid AI anxiety.
One path is betting on the window period, while the other is maintaining the basic plate.
But it should be noted that what determines the outcome is not the 1 billion red envelopes for user acquisition, but whether there are users who voluntarily click on Yuanbao as a regular AI tool to try out without any incentives after the referral incentives have exited and the viral marketing has gone offline.
If there are, then the chaos in WeChat groups these days can become an acceptable trial-and-error cost; if not, then these short four days will only become a brief and costly tug-of-war for this super platform in its pursuit of growth

From the crazy spread of the red envelope links in various WeChat groups and Moments at the beginning of the month, to the official announcement by WeChat to start banning external links directing to the red envelopes now,…

- The rapid rollout of the Yuanbao red envelope links through WeChat sparked significant user skepticism about Tencent's strategic planning, as the links were banned shortly after their launch.  
- This incident illustrates Tencent's struggle to balance aggressive growth strategies with maintaining the integrity of WeChat as a core platform, indicating an oscillation between different operational priorities.  
- The aftermath raises questions about whether this conflict was a marketing miscalculation or a necessary risk in a highly competitive AI-driven environment, ultimately reflecting Tencent's expectations for Yuanbao's potential impact.

From diversion to banning, this is not Tencent's "scripted plan"