New customers have piled in to the Chinese language social media app RedNote simply days earlier than a proposed US ban on the favored social media app TikTok, because the lesser-known firm rushes to capitalize on the sudden inflow whereas strolling a fragile line of moderating English-language content material.
In a dwell chat dubbed “TikTok Refugees” on RedNote on Monday, greater than 50,000 US and Chinese language customers joined the room. Veteran Chinese language customers, with some sense of bewilderment, welcomed their American counterparts and swapped notes with them on matters similar to meals and youth unemployment. Often, nevertheless, the Individuals veered into riskier territory.
“Is it OK to ask about how legal guidelines are completely different in China versus Hong Kong?” one American consumer requested. A Chinese language consumer responded: “We desire to not speak about that right here.”
Such impromptu cultural exchanges have been going down all throughout RedNote, recognized in China as Xiaohongshu, because the app surged to the highest of US obtain rankings this week. Its reputation was pushed by US social media customers casting about for a substitute for ByteDance-owned TikTok days prematurely of its looming ban.
RedNote, a enterprise capital-backed startup with a most up-to-date valuation of $17bn, permits customers to curate photographs, movies and textual content documenting their lives. It has been considered as a attainable IPO candidate in China. Lately, it has turn out to be a de facto search engine for its 300 million-plus customers searching for journey suggestions, anti-ageing lotions and restaurant suggestions.
In solely two days, greater than 700,000 new customers joined Xiaohongshu, an individual near the corporate mentioned. Xiaohongshu didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. US downloads of RedNote have been up greater than 200% year-over-year this week, and 194% from the week earlier than, in accordance with estimates from app information analysis agency Sensor Tower.
The second-most widespread free app on Apple’s App Retailer listing on Tuesday, Lemon8, one other social media app owned by ByteDance, skilled an analogous surge final month, with downloads leaping by 190% in December to about 3.4m. The app noticed an analogous rise in Google’s Play Retailer.
The inflow appeared to catch RedNote unexpectedly, with two sources aware of the corporate saying they have been scrambling to search out methods to reasonable English-language content material and construct English-Chinese language translation instruments. TikTok customers posted movies of themselves talking in primary Mandarin in order to work together extra absolutely with RedNote customers.
RedNote maintains just one model of its app, reasonably than splitting it into abroad and home apps – a rarity amongst Chinese language social apps which can be topic to home moderation guidelines. ByteDance publishes two variations of its short-form video app: Duoyin in China and TikTok within the the rest of the world.
RedNote is eager to mine the sudden rush of consideration, as executives see it as a possible path to realize international reputation much like TikTok’s. The share costs of some China-listed corporations that conduct companies with RedNote, similar to Hangzhou Onechance Tech Corp, surged as a lot as 20% on Tuesday, hitting the day by day restrict.
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The spike in US customers comes earlier than a 19 January deadline for ByteDance to promote TikTok or face a ban within the US on nationwide safety grounds. TikTok is at present utilized by about 170 million Individuals, roughly half of the nation’s inhabitants, and is overwhelmingly widespread with younger folks and the advertisers trying to attain them.
“Individuals utilizing Rednote appears like a cheeky center finger to the US authorities for its overreach into companies and privateness issues,” mentioned Stella Kittrell, 29, a content material creator primarily based in Baltimore, Maryland. She mentioned she joined RedNote in hopes of additional collaborations with Chinese language corporations which she discovered useful. Some customers mentioned they joined the platform to hunt alternate options to Meta-owned Fb and Instagram, and to Elon Musk’s X. Some expressed doubt that they might rebuild their TikTok follower base on these apps.
“It’s not the identical: Instagram, X or every other app,” mentioned Brian Atabansi, 29, a enterprise analyst and content material creator primarily based in San Diego, California. “Primarily due to how natural it’s to construct group on TikTok,” he mentioned.
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