Monetized socialization on the front end: exchanging money as social activities through Red Packet and Transfer on WeChat

Research on the monetization of sociality in social media often emphasizes the back-end processes, where people’s online connections and relationships are commodified for platforms’ financial gain. This paper argues for expanding existing studies on monetized socialization by paying attention to the front-end, where users’ online connections occur in relation to the experiences of money. Focusing on the digitalization of the Chinese cultural tradition of hongbao on WeChat, I show how WeChat extends the possibilities of online connections in a monetized way through money-exchanging services such as WeChat Red Packet and money Transfer. Exploring the heterogeneous social activities in relation to WeChat hongbao in everyday life, I suggest that WeChat shapes the configuration of sociality where money is an essential mechanism through which digital sociality is produced and experienced. By showing how back-end systems are implicated in users’ front-end monetary connections, I argue that such reconfiguration of digital sociality is integral to the platform economy, advancing the understanding of the dual layers of monetization at play in online sociality.