American TikTok ‘refugees’ surprisingly move to China’s ‘RedNote’

Social media startup Xiaohongshu has seen its Chinese app go to the top of the iPhone’s US download charts in an unexpected response to short-form video app TikTok, which faces a ban at the end of this week.

Xiaohongshu, which translates as “Little Red Book” but is commonly known in the US as RedNote, topped Apple’s free app downloads this week as so-called TikTok refugees flocked to its platform.

An employee at the Shanghai-based company described the sudden download surge as a “surprise” as it has no plans to grow by targeting US users and the startup is focused on consolidating its popularity in China.

Most of its content is in Mandarin, and the app does not have a translation feature that allows new American users to understand posts. The app does not have an official English name.

They added that the company was trying to take advantage of the sudden increase in traffic and may have to change its content review mechanisms if US influencers started uploading posts.

New American users were initially focused on introducing themselves to a Chinese audience and identifying themselves as “TikTok refugees” or “TikTok nomads”. A user named Trini posted her book recommendations echoing the “BookTok” community in 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 the US move to ban TikTok, with several viral posts joking that they simply switched to another Chinese platform.

TikTok’s parent company 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 by 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 170 million users in the US, that doesn’t mean the platform will disappear immediately, but ByteDance wouldn’t be able to update the app and performance would drop.

Xiaohongshu is an Instagram-like app hugely popular among 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 urban consumers through in-post campaigns or by paying influencers. It has also steadily grown its male user base.

The company is profitable and has been one of the few success stories in a Chinese internet sector plagued by bankruptcies and falling valuations. Xiaohongshu has invested in its e-commerce business in China, trying to turn its traffic into new revenue streams. So far, it has struggled to make much of a foray into e-commerce, 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 17 billion. USD in a secondary share sale where venture capital firm DST Global bought shares from existing investors. At the top of Chinese internet start-up valuations in 2021, the company was valued at 20 billion. USD in a funding round that included Singaporean state-backed investor Temasek.

Xiaohongshu is aiming for an IPO in Hong Kong but is waiting for Beijing to clarify its position on overseas IPOs of major tech companies, the FT previously reported.

The start-up’s IPO plans are complicated by the wealth of information it has 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