Do you still remember the year 2006 when people sent New Year greetings via text messages?

In my memory, 10 years is not a very short period of time, but looking at the Spring Festival Gala, there will be a sense of déjà vu. After all, almost half of the hosts of the 2006 Spring Festival Gala and the 2016 Spring Festival Gala are the same. As for the programs, there seems to be not much difference in style.

But on another level, 10 years can turn a teenager into an adult, and the excitement of looking forward to new clothes turns into the annoyance of considering how to deal with forced marriage and blind dates. The impact of the development of the Internet on our Spring Festival is not like the flowers in the Spring Festival Gala are the same every year, but the people are different every year.

Several elements of the Spring Festival, including New Year's greetings, red envelopes and the Spring Festival Gala, have undergone new changes due to the development of technology.

New Year greetings, from text messages to WeChat

Speaking of polite New Year greetings, 2006 was the year when text messages became popular. Let's take a look at the news from Xinhua News Agency in 2006:

During the Spring Festival this year (2006), 12 billion text messages were sent nationwide. Although more and more New Year greetings were received, people found helplessly that the repetition rate of these greetings was also alarmingly high. New Year greetings are increasingly moving towards "industrialized" mass production.

According to the survey of "Spring Festival Arrangements and Expenses" conducted by the China Social Survey Institute, 41% of the respondents chose to send text messages to wish each other a happy new year, and 36% chose to make phone calls to wish each other a happy new year. Only 18% of the respondents chose the traditional way of visiting each other to wish each other a happy new year. The reporter found that many people received nearly 100 text messages during the Spring Festival, but basically they received seven or eight versions of the same text messages over and over again.

As early as 2004, some media even questioned whether sending New Year greetings via text messages was a good idea.

This year, few people choose to send New Year greetings via text messages. I myself haven’t received a single text message. Instead, I have received quite a few New Year greetings on WeChat .

From visiting people in person to wish them a happy new year, to making phone calls to wish them a happy new year, to sending text messages and now WeChat greetings, the cost is getting lower and lower, the time is getting shorter and shorter, the variety is increasing, and the social scope is getting wider and wider.

New Year greetings usually happen only between important relatives and friends, and the same is true for phone calls. New Year greetings via text messages have a much wider coverage. People who have daily contacts will contact each other out of courtesy. When it comes to New Year greetings via WeChat, most of them are people I have never met in my daily life and are online friends. It can be said that this WeChat New Year greeting may be the only communication we have in this year.

As for the New Year greetings on WeChat that I received, the forms have changed greatly, including ordinary text, ordinary text with emoticons, voice, New Year greeting red envelopes, homemade picture greeting cards, and even short videos. Basically all forms of media have been used.

As for other ordinary WeChat messages during the Spring Festival, the number is an astronomical number that is difficult to estimate.

Let’s imagine the new year greetings in the next decade, such as virtual reality greetings:

It's Chinese New Year, and coder Xiao Liu put on a VR helmet, a gift from Silicon Valley. He chose the "elegant bamboo forest" environment to connect with his father-in-law in the north. Through sound processing, he turned the carefully prepared New Year's greetings into the fast-paced book style that his father-in-law likes. Then, he presented the virtual set of cigarettes, alcohol and tea. After a little politeness, his father-in-law happily accepted it, and then a message popped up in front of him: You have three shopping cards in your account, please check.

Red envelopes, from physical to virtual

Just as many foreign social network operators could never have imagined that Tencent would make QQ Show a big hit, it is difficult for them to understand that the red envelopes called Lucky Money could detonate social networks and activate mobile payments.

According to WeChat data, the number of people participating in WeChat red envelopes on the New Year’s Eve of the Year of the Monkey reached 420 million, and the total number of red envelopes sent and received reached 8.08 billion, which is 8 times the 1.01 billion on the New Year’s Eve of the Year of the Sheep.

In addition, a new way of playing was launched on New Year’s Eve this year - a total of 29 million red envelope photos were sent out, and the total number of red envelope photo interactions exceeded 192 million times.

The emergence of WeChat red envelopes two years ago greatly stimulated Alipay, the king of China's mobile payment field . It bought the advertising rights of the Spring Festival Gala red envelopes at a high price this year, and launched interactive activities such as collecting blessings. However, it seemed a thankless task in the end. After the event ended, it was criticized on the Internet.

From the red envelope dispute between WeChat and Alipay to the war of words on the Internet, the red envelope policies of the giants affect the hearts of hundreds of millions of people. The way products and activities are designed is even more related to whether the manufacturers will become the target of public criticism.

However, compared with the above changes in the way of greeting the New Year, the birth of WeChat or Alipay red envelopes does not have a particularly big impact on physical red envelopes. Taking WeChat red envelopes as an example, the upper limit of 200 yuan per red envelope is quite large, and it is more of a way to stimulate activity and a fast mobile payment method.

Therefore, the red envelopes on WeChat and Alipay are not a replacement for the existing actual red envelopes, but a unique product of mobile payment packaged in the red envelope, a Chinese product. It contains too many Chinese social customs and human characteristics, and then becomes a digital game that breaks out on time during the Spring Festival every year.

Spring Festival Gala, from one screen to two screens and then to bullet screen

Two years ago, it was said that the Spring Festival Gala has the same flowers and hosts every year, just like Zhou Tao, Dong Qing and Zhu Jun have not changed for ten years. Even so, the Spring Festival Gala has created a new trend that the organizers did not expect because of the existence of mobile phones as a second screen.

In fact, we have talked a lot about the interaction between the second screen of mobile phones and the Spring Festival Gala. Before the rise of social networks, especially Weibo, the Spring Festival Gala was a show that everyone watched in front of the TV. People in the north and south said it was not good at all, and the next day the news broadcast said that the satisfaction rate exceeded 90%.

However, since the emergence of Weibo, joke tellers began to use the Spring Festival Gala as material for secondary creations, and the excitement of the Gala has greatly increased. The Spring Festival Gala, which used to be dispensable in terms of viewing appeal, has also received more attention than ever before. This is even more so this year, for example, the event of allowing Liu Xiao Ling Tong to perform on the Spring Festival Gala was pushed by various forces.

The Spring Festival Gala stage is not only for actors and hosts, but also for joke tellers and marketers. The Spring Festival Gala stage is not only on TV, but also has more Internet presentation forms, such as bullet screen.

Although the audience of the Spring Festival Gala is too huge and CCTV is very open, we don't expect barrage to appear on the live TV broadcast of the Spring Festival Gala in the short term. However, it has already appeared on the Japanese website NICONICO, the ancestor of barrage, during the Spring Festival Gala.

The Chinese Spring Festival Gala, with its professional commentary, undoubtedly opened the door to a new world for Japanese audiences. In the comments of Japanese viewers who watched the Chinese Spring Festival Gala with curiosity, we can see that Sa Beining has attracted much attention because of his identity as Zhang Ziyi's ex-boyfriend, Chinese actresses such as Zhao Wei have been praised for their beauty-preserving skills, and Japanese netizens have lamented that the singers on the stage have great singing skills (I really can't bear to tell them that it's lip-syncing).

To some extent, seeing “how Japanese netizens watch the Chinese Spring Festival Gala” is also another experience.

In fact, last year iQiyi started live streaming the Spring Festival Gala with video barrages, and the final data was very ideal: the maximum number of people online at the same time exceeded 14 million, the total number of views exceeded 70 million during the more than 4 hours of live streaming of the Spring Festival Gala, and the final number of barrages exceeded 100 million.

In addition to the programs, Meizu also used bullet screen elements in the advertising space it spent tens of millions of yuan to buy during this year's Spring Festival Gala. We can see that the development of the Internet and technology is intentionally or unintentionally re-creating the unchanging Spring Festival Gala, giving it more connotation and fun.

Of course, technology and the Internet have changed the Spring Festival in far more ways than the above. For example, the challenge of playing with mobile phones to dining etiquette is more obvious at family gatherings where both young and old are present. Renting a girlfriend or boyfriend online to go home for the New Year has become a hot topic that lasts for a long time, and so on.

These changes are more obvious because of the large-scale population movement brought about by the Spring Festival and the Spring Festival travel rush, and the collision of different age groups. Among them, how many parents first came into contact with smartphones, used WeChat for the first time, and sent red envelopes for the first time during this period? And you probably have no impression of the Spring Festival 10 years ago when people used text messages to wish each other a happy new year, didn't know how to complain about the Spring Festival Gala, and didn't have red envelopes to grab.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.