After there was no "actual controller", Alipay made another big move and picked up the "social dream" again.
Recently, Alipay has tested a social function called "Interest Community", which has successfully appeared on the hot search.
As the name suggests, this time it is mainly to create an online social community that provides users with interest-based social networks. The entrance is located at the top of the message page in the APP, click to enter.
There are a variety of interests, with a variety of online discussion groups. Users can selectively join a number of interest groups such as the world of fishing friends and riding according to their hobbies.
Similar to the Douban group, you can view strategy posts, experience posts, etc. in the group, and you can also post your own posts to discuss.
In addition, there are also activity groups to find offline "partners". For example, activities such as mountain climbing, exhibitions, etc.
It seems that Alipay still understands young people very well, and it deeply meets their needs for "finding a partner".
* Source: Tech Planet
At first glance, the fox girl can be dipped in some Douban, and some stickers, and she can also chat in real time like WeChat.
However, since it is still in the beta testing stage, the content pool of each interest group is far from rich.
After the news came out, most netizens were not optimistic. Some people think that Alipay is already too bloated, and there is no desire to socialize when looking at the UI.
In fact, this is not the first time Alipay has done social networking, but every time there is no result, some people are worried that it will not repeat the same mistake again.
Back in 2015, Alipay began to storm social networking and launched the "Life Circle", which is similar to WeChat's circle of friends.
In 2016, the "Circles" feature was launched non-stop, and multiple shared communities were also divided according to people and interests, but the test was less than a month before the incident.
With the explosion of the two circles of "white-collar diary" and "campus diary", Alipay has been pushed to the forefront.
Because only female users can post in these two circles, male Sesame Credit over 750 points can comment, otherwise there are only likes and tips options.
As a result, some people started to use their brains to try to attract other users to reward by posting large-scale photos.
This incident had a bad impact at the time, and some people thought Alipay was vulgar and played a side game.
Soon, Alipay officially apologized and announced that "all circles suspected of playing side kicks will be disbanded immediately".
Since then, Alipay's exploration in the social field has had to put on the brakes. Although the section of the life circle has not been stopped, it has also been removed from the homepage position, and there has been no big splash.
Today, Alipay has 800 million monthly active users, second only to WeChat and Douyin, and will certainly not give up the "social" cake easily.
But Fox Sister thinks that the most successful thing Alipay has done in social interaction is the function of raising chickens in Ant Manor.
This can also be regarded as a kind of minimalist socialization, in order to raise this chick, young people are keen to "steal" energy between friends. Nearly 15 million users and friends have taken on the "co-custody" of chicks.
Of course, Alibaba's "social dream" does not only grow in the "soil" of Alipay.
From Ali Wangwang to Wangxin, from back and forth to DingTalk. But with the development of time, it has not blossomed, but fortunately, DingTalk has become famous in the field of corporate socialization.
Nowadays, doing social networking is no longer just Ali's "one-man war". In recent years, large manufacturers have laid out social tracks, and various social software have emerged in an endless stream.
Among them, the most popular is the interest in social networking. In the past year, "hitchhiking" has become a new trend that has swept all major social platforms.
Whether it's on Douyin or Xiaohongshu, the search volume of related topics is super high. Many young people have left their partners, they can't go to class, they can't eat well, and their children are the soul of life.
In fact, in the field of interest and social networking, large manufacturers have already taken action, but they have not yet run out of the "leader".
In 2019, Douyin launched "Fei Chat", focusing on interest socialization, but it ended in failure. Later, the "circle" was launched, which was positioned as an interest circle in the same city, but it was announced that it would go offline after only one year of launch.
In 2022, Douyin added a new "interest matching" feature to the APP, which allows you to chat anonymously, voice chat and watch interest matching together, and so on.
Even NetEase Cloud launched the "Listen Together" feature in 2020.
It will match you with people with similar listening preferences based on your listening tastes. Then, according to the length of time the two people listen together, they can unlock more information about each other, and they can also apply for unmasking, and there will also be an entrance to chat.
It is said that many people have already found a partner on it, and it is incredible.
Therefore, the end of the mobile Internet is socialization. Almost every big company wants to have a place in the social sphere. But after so many years of fierce fighting, there has never been a person who can shake the status of the social boss of WeChat.
Alipay's layout of the interest community this time, I don't know what big tricks are hidden behind it.
However, if you want to make the leap from a payment tool to a social circle, cultivating the user's mind is a huge problem. Don't you think that Alipay is social, and there is always a sense of going to the bank to drink coffee and chat?
Users are Xi to close the APP immediately after payment, especially if the balance is not much like the fox girl, the heart can be half cold at a glance. How can I socialize with everyone here, I'm really not in that mood.
In addition, there are many netizens who feel that "social + payment" is called convenient to use, and "pure payment + social" is called redundant.
So the question is, are you optimistic about Alipay to do interest social again?