Social media start-up Xiaohongshu has seen its Chinese app go to the top of the iPhone’s US download charts, in an unexpected reaction to short-form video app TikTok facing a ban at the end of this week.
Xiaohongshu, which translates as “Little Red Book” but is widely known in the US as RedNote, topped Apple’s free-app downloads this week as so-called TikTok refugees flocked to its platform.
One employee at the Shanghai-based company described the sudden download surge as a “surprise”, as it has no plans for growth through targeting American users and the start-up is focused on consolidating its popularity in China.
Most of its content is in Mandarin, and the app does not have a translation feature to enable new US users to understand posts. The app does not have an official English name.
They added that the company was trying to capitalise on the sudden surge in traffic and may have to change content review mechanisms if American influencers start uploading posts.
“Xiaohongshu now faces the unique challenge of managing a single platform with both Chinese and western users who have vastly different expectations around content moderation and free speech, while also maintaining compliance with Chinese internet regulations,” said Olivia Plotnick, founder of the social media agency Wai Social.
“Rapidly adapting the platform to accommodate this influx of non-Mandarin-speaking users would require significant investment and infrastructure changes that may not align with Xiaohongshu’s current focus.”
New US users were initially focused on introducing themselves to a Chinese audience, identifying themselves as “TikTok refugees” or “TikTok nomads”. One user named Trini was posting her book recommendations, echoing the “BookTok” community within TikTok, while another user known as “SoCal Masker” wrote in English and Chinese that he was looking “forward to this new opportunity to share my content”.
The sudden influx of users is largely a symbolic shift led by influencers protesting against the US move to ban TikTok, with several viral posts joking that they were simply switching to another Chinese platform. It “points to rising dissatisfaction with Meta’s platforms, which people presumed would be the beneficiary of a TikTok ban”, said Plotnick.
TikTok’s parent ByteDance is bracing for a potential ban if the US Supreme Court does not overturn a law to block the app unless a non-Chinese buyer is found before the January 19 deadline. The court indicated on Friday that it would uphold the ban because ByteDance has close ties to the Chinese government.
For TikTok’s 170mn users in the US, this would not mean the platform immediately disappears, but ByteDance would be unable to update the app and performance would decline.
Xiaohongshu is an Instagram-like app hugely popular with young Chinese women, who use the platform for travel, dining and beauty tips. It is an important platform for fashion and beauty brands to reach affluent consumers in cities through promotions in posts or by paying influencers. It has also been steadily growing its male user base.
The company is profitable and has been one of the few success stories in a Chinese internet sector hit by bankruptcies and falling valuations. Xiaohongshu has been investing in its ecommerce business in China, trying to turn its traffic into new revenue streams. So far, it has struggled to make much of a dent in ecommerce, a heavily saturated market dominated by Alibaba’s Taobao and ByteDance’s Douyin, the Chinese sister version of TikTok.
Xiaohongshu did not respond to a request for comment.
In the summer, Xiaohongshu was valued at $17bn in a secondary share sale in which venture capital firm DST Global bought shares from existing investors. At the peak of Chinese internet start-up valuations in 2021, the company was valued at $20bn in a funding round that included Singaporean state-backed investor Temasek.
Xiaohongshu is targeting an initial public offering in Hong Kong, but is waiting for Beijing to clarify its stance towards the overseas listing of large tech companies, the FT previously reported.
The start-up’s IPO plans are complicated by the wealth of information it holds about Chinese consumers, which could put it in the crosshairs of China’s restrictions on cross-border data sharing.
Additional reporting by Hannah Murphy in San Francisco
