The TikTok ban in the US is looming as the 19 January deadline approaches and people await the Supreme Court ruling. An unlikely winner that emerged from the situation is Xiaohongshu (REDnote or RED), the Chinese lifestyle platform that has been compared to Instagram and Pinterest. In the face of a possible US ban of the app by ByteDance due to national security concerns, many American TikTok users have emigrated to the neighbouring Chinese app Xiaohongshu (小红书), which means “Little Red Book” in Chinese.
As TikTok users seek refuge on the Chinese lifestyle platform, Xiaohongshu shot to the top of the Apple App Store’s most-downloaded list on 13 January, overtaking TikTok’s Lemon8 and ChatGPT. American users are typically posting in English and/or machine-translated Chinese with the hashtag #tiktokrefugee. As of 14 January, there are 77,000 notes with the topic, up from 2,000 the previous day, with 38.58 million views, up from 390,000 on 13 January.
On Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, the topic “Large number of American netizens swarm onto Xiaohongshu” (#大量美国网友涌入小红书#) reached number 4 on the Hot Search list with 20.80 million views. At the same time, “Xiaohongshu” concept stock, i.e. shares from about a dozen stakeholders that might benefit from Xiaohongshu’s sudden surge of popularity, soared on 14 January.
Some users are directed to the app by influencers on TikTok, while others are just curious after it went viral. However, Xiaohongshu seems prepared for the influx of TikTok users. It recently updated its user interface (UI) to resemble Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese sister app. However, it still faces challenges such as server lag issues when receiving a surge of users, which happens to the platform before and during special events. Its algorithm for content and censorship might need updating too, especially in the face of multiculturalism and diverse content creators from the US. Of course, the biggest challenge is still language, as Xiaohongshu doesn’t have a comprehensive translation function.
