Kuaishou closed its 2026 Lunar New Year promotions reporting a fresh daily‑active‑user record, the second consecutive holiday in which the short‑video app hit a seasonal apex. The surge was driven by a cluster of gamified, cash‑oriented features — notably a “shake to grab” red‑envelope mechanic and a QR‑based “fortune code” for sending greetings — that the company says generated unusually high participation over the holiday week.
The platform disclosed that users of its “shake to get red envelope” feature rose by more than 60% year‑on‑year, while the “swap” red‑envelope mechanic delivered an average of more than ten exchanges per user. Nearly 80 million people joined flagship events with festive branding, and scanning activity for the new fortune QR codes was especially concentrated in Chongqing, Harbin and Changchun, suggesting both broad reach and deep engagement in major inland and northeastern cities.
Those numbers are more than seasonal bragging rights. They underline Kuaishou’s continuing strength in turning cultural rituals — here, the tradition of giving and receiving red envelopes — into sticky digital interactions that keep users on the app and open channels to commerce and advertising. The format blends straightforward monetary incentives with social rituals, making ephemeral promotions feel like part of the New Year’s social fabric rather than pure marketing.
For advertisers and merchants the holiday spike matters because the Spring Festival is a premium window for consumer attention. High DAU figures during the festival typically translate into higher ad inventory value, stronger conversion rates for live‑streaming merchants and a useful replenishment of user cohorts for affective retention strategies. Yet heavy reliance on cash incentives poses trade‑offs: the uplift may be costly to sustain and risks conditioning users to expect payments for engagement.
Kuaishou’s approach also illustrates a strategic contrast with other Chinese short‑video rivals. The platform has long leaned into features and narratives that resonate with lower‑tier and inland city users, and the festival mechanics reinforce that orientation by rewarding community behavior and local participation. QR‑based greetings — the so‑called “fortune code” — indicate a continued focus on bridging online interactions with real‑world rituals and payments, an area where incumbents are still experimenting.
Looking ahead, the key questions are whether these high‑engagement promotions convert into lasting user habits and higher lifetime value, and how regulators will view rapidly proliferating cash‑reward gimmicks. For now they show Kuaishou capable of using cultural insight to spur large, measurable bursts of activity; whether that translates into sustainable revenue growth and healthier unit economics will determine how meaningful the record DAU really is.