“Hello everyone, my name is Ryan. I’m a TikTok refugee. The American government banned TikTok so we’re looking for an alternative… I’m sorry to bother you here. I hope we don’t have to stay here. long,” user Xiaohongshu who goes by the name Ryan Martin said on a video posted yesterday that appears to target the app’s Chinese user base. He translated the statement into Chinese and used a robotic voice generator to read it in the video, which has been liked more than 24,000 times. “It’s okay, you’re not disturbing. When you’re active, we’re sleeping,” read one of the top comments in Chinese. There are also dozens of live audio chat rooms on the platform where American and Chinese users explain to each other, perhaps for the first time in many cases, how their societies are and clarify common misunderstandings. One of the most popular chat rooms has been listened to by almost 30,000 users. While Xiaohongshu is not specifically named in the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act that is currently being considered by the Supreme Court and could lead to a US ban on TikTok, the law is. it does not specify whether “alien adversary controlled applications” may face the same fate in the future. In other words, there is no guarantee that Xiaohongshu will not follow in the footsteps of TikTok being blocked by the US government as well. The ban on TikTok may have put Xiaohongshu in the spotlight in the US, but the app has been successful for a long time in China. Founded in 2013, the Shanghai-based company has been operating one of, if not the trendiest platforms in China for the past few years and is reported to generate more than $1 billion in annual revenue by 2024. It’s easily the hottest app around. China that non-Chinese people have never heard of before. diaspora community in Malaysia. Restaurants, tourist attractions, and travel companies around the world are starting to pay attention to the app as many Chinese tourists rely on local information and recommendations shared by fellow Chinese. The app is very different from TikTok in a few key ways. . While Xiaohongshu allows users to post short vertical videos like TikTok, the majority of content on the platform is photo slideshows augmented with text, so people often see more Instagram competitors than TikTok. The AI-powered box-shaped feed (referred to as “stone box” in tech professionals) has been so successful in driving engagement that larger social media companies like Tencent and ByteDance have copied the design in their own products. Lemon8, another popular social media application developed by ByteDance besides TikTok, is widely seen as an attempt to imitate Xiaohongshu and succeed. In fact, the app doesn’t even have a good English translation of the name itself: Xiaohongshu is just a phonetic translation of the Chinese name. 小红书. While the literal translation of “little red book” may remind English-speaking users of the collection of speeches and propaganda slogans of former Chinese leader Mao Zedong of the same name, it has a different connotation in China, where users describe it as a reliable user source. . -Recommendations made for ordinary things, such as restaurants to go to or cosmetic products to buy.
