On 13 May, about a week after the high-profile “Red Cat” initiative between the lifestyle platform Rednote and Taobao and Tmall Group of Alibaba, it was reported that Rednote has found another partner, Alibaba’s arch-rival JD.com.
Like the “Red Cat” initiative before this, the Rednote–JD.com partnership will reportedly enable direct links in Rednote merchandise posts that take users to JD.com to complete transactions. According to the report, the partnership will be officially announced in a matter of days.
This is not surprising, as before “Red Cat”, Rednote was already running several programmes with multiple e-commerce platforms, including Taobao and Tmall, as well as JD.com. Red Cat itself is sometimes described as an upgraded version of the previous arrangement. It is, then, only natural that Rednote would choose to upgrade its partnership with JD.com. However, it does cast doubt on some comments about Alibaba needing Rednote more than Rednote needs Alibaba, since Rednote is now teaming up with a second e-commerce platform.
It also throws Rednote’s own e-commerce venture into question. In fact, some pundits were already concerned when Red Cat was announced. With the latest report, some feel that Rednote is “selling out” and compromising its content with ads featuring outbound links. The community and the platform’s “cultural” labels are what attract users and content, so ads to e-commerce platforms might diminish the brand equity. However, as a business, Rednote needs the effective monetisation of the content ecosystem. The risk of the current strategy, then, is that it could make the path to Rednote becoming an e-commerce platform in its own right even longer.
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