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TikTok Ban Fears Drive US Customers to Different Chinese language Apps



A pair of Chinese language-made social apps, Xiaohongshu and Lemon8, have taken excessive two positions on Apple Inc.’s iPhone obtain charts within the US as customers hunt down options to TikTok forward of an imminent ban.

Xiaohongshu — China’s closest analog to Instagram — grew to become essentially the most downloaded free app on iOS and rose to the highest 10 on Alphabet Inc.’s Google Play retailer for the primary time. Many new customers labelled themselves “TikTok refugees” as they joined. Acquainted to Chinese language who use the service not simply as a repository for journey and pet movies but in addition a reside on-line market, its rise within the US took many within the trade abruptly.

It displays a willingness amongst TikTok’s 170 million-plus customers to discover options. ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok faces a deadline of Jan. 19 to discover a US purchaser so as to proceed working within the nation, and the Supreme Court docket has signalled it’s unlikely to oppose the regulation imposing that situation.

Wanting a coverage reversal by President-elect Donald Trump or ByteDance promoting its US service, TikTok can be in breach of the regulation inside every week. Chinese language officers are evaluating choices together with one which includes Elon Musk buying TikTok’s US operations, Bloomberg Information reported.

Chinese language shares linked to Xiaohongshu rose on Tuesday. They included firms that design advertisements, a digital advertising and marketing providers operator and even client manufacturers recognized to hawk their wares on the social media platform.

Xiaohongshu — loosely pronounced “Shau Hong Shew” — is taken into account one of many extra placing successes within the Chinese language web area. Whereas its title actually interprets into Little Purple E-book, the corporate has persistently harassed it bears no relation to Mao Zedong’s well-known tome of quotations.

Began in 2013 in Shanghai by Miranda Qu and Charlwin Mao, the app morphed in a couple of years from a web-based procuring information to a group of trendsetters, earlier than venturing into e-commerce.

Alongside the best way, Xiaohongshu attracted backing from massive names equivalent to Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Temasek Holdings Pte. Like ByteDance’s Tiktok and Douyin, the Shanghai-based startup has at the moment efficiently amassed a military of influencers partly through money incentives. They appeal to eyeballs and peddle merchandise to hundreds of thousands of customers, from which the app takes a lower.

“Those benefiting from site visitors from the TikTok ban are nonetheless Chinese language apps,” GSR Ventures managing director Allen Zhu wrote on WeChat, posting a screenshot of the US App Retailer obtain chart.

Along with Beijing-based ByteDance, Xiaohongshu is certainly one of only a handful of main Chinese language web unicorns which have but to make a inventory market debut. The app was on monitor to double internet revenue to greater than $1 billion in 2024, Bloomberg Information has reported.

Its rise prompted the creation of options equivalent to Lemon8, a equally designed rival authored by ByteDance. Lemon8 downloads throughout iOS and Android tripled final week, in line with Sensor Tower knowledge, and it was briefly the most-downloaded free iPhone app within the US on Monday.

Until now nevertheless, success overseas has largely eluded Xiaohongshu, or Purple Observe because it’s turn out to be recognized within the US. The app is extra extensively utilized by Chinese language-speaking communities abroad, although it additionally has an English-language model.

A stream of recent English-language content material and customers confirmed up on the service this week, and the #tiktokrefugee hashtag garnered greater than 44 million views.

In a single well-liked video, a creator known as on all TikTok migrants to make the transfer to Xiaohongshu and stated she was already settling in properly on the brand new app. One other used an AI translator to document a message in Mandarin to say that “Individuals help Chinese language greater than you assume.”

Different newcomers made jokes about how they’ll miss their “Chinese language spy” when TikTok shuts within the US, eliciting sympathetic feedback from Chinese language customers.

By Bloomberg Information

Study extra:

Supreme Court docket Indicators It’s Prone to Uphold TikTok Ban in US

A majority of justices steered they see US nationwide safety considerations as overriding the free speech pursuits of the businesses and a gaggle of content material creators.

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