Chinese App RedNote Becomes the New Home for “TikTok Refugees,” but Will the Exodus Prove Permanent?
In the midst of TikTok going dark in the U.S. (and then coming back online less than 24 hours later), users have been flocking to a similar Chinese app, whose owners are keen to capitalize on their rival’s uncertain future.
Xiaohongshu — or RedNote or Red as it has come to be called in the U.S. (the literal translation is “Little Red Book,” which is the title of a book of quotations by Mao Tse-tung) — has surged to the top of the App Store downloads list over the past week, accruing hundreds of thousands of users, including content creators and influencers, while TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance tussles with the United States government over national security and data-mining concerns. Currently, around 170 million Americans use TikTok — roughly half of the country’s population.
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On Jan. 13, over 50,000 U.S. and Chinese users joined a RedNote live chat, dubbed “TikTok Refugees,” where longtime fans of the app in China welcomed their incoming counterparts. The hashtag #TikTokRefugee notched over 35 million views on RedNote, and Reuters reported on Jan. 14 that more than 700,000 new users had joined the app in only two days. A handful of celebrities also joined the app, including Selena Gomez, Kim Kardashian, Kevin Bacon and Jimmy O. Yang.
“I’m joining Little Red Book 小紅書. My dad already has 30k followers on there,” Crazy Rich Asians star Yang posted on his Instagram account. “I already know Mandarin so I guess I’ll be teaching English on there instead.” The actor has already amassed nearly 400,000 followers on RedNote, posting videos of his father teaching Shanghainese and showing off his pug for the app’s so-called “cat tax” – a wholesome trend of showing one’s pet on the platform.
In addition to celebs, several content creators with large TikTok followings have decided to split their content amongst several platforms, including Instagram, YouTube and RedNote. Nurse John, who has a following of 7.5 million on TikTok, posted days before the ban that he joined, urging his followers to find their “favorite nurse bestie” on the platform. The TikTok star is a registered nurse turned touring stand-up comedian, who built his following on the platform with humorous skits about his day job. The creator, whose real name is John Dela Cruz, says there’s no other platform like TikTok, but RedNote felt similar.
“If you want something that looks like TikTok and is programmed like TikTok, you might need to learn a little bit of Mandarin or Chinese, but it’s exactly what we’re looking for,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter, adding that he told his followers that RedNote “is still going to resemble TikTok,” so they should join him on the app. He said he received messages from fans around the world, not just the U.S., saying they were joining RedNote to keep following him.
Matt and Omar, a married influencer couple who rose to prominence on TikTok for Matt, an American, introducing Omar, a Brit, to American food chains, also joined RedNote. Matt, whose full name is Matt Benfield, posted a video about Americans downloading RedNote amid the TikTok ban, alerting the couple’s followers that they had joined the app.
Benfield tells THR that the couple’s reception has been great, but he heard that the app might separate foreign IP addresses from domestic Chinese ones, emphasizing that it would hurt the Chinese diaspora. This idea floated around TikTok last week, but so far no official sources have announced the change, offering a beacon of hope for those who have long used the platform to connect with Chinese culture. “It’s like this cultural exchange that’s really beautiful in a way,” Benfield says of the users from both countries getting the chance to speak with one another on RedNote.
TikTok and RedNote are decidedly similar — a home page with an abundance of short videos to mindlessly scroll through, each one with a like, comment and share button — but they are not a one-to-one match. China has its own domestic version of TikTok, Douyin, which also hails from ByteDance and was previously strictly for those with Chinese phone numbers. On Sunday, following the removal of TikTok from the U.S. app store, screenshots floated around social media that showed international users suddenly being able to sign up for the platform. Douyin is still not in the U.S. app store, however.
For fans of U.S. social media platforms, RedNote is best described as Pinterest meets Instagram with a spoonful of TikTok (the platform’s user base is largely women). RedNote has become one of China’s fastest-growing platform since its 2013 launch, with its most recent value hitting over $17 billion, according to the Financial Times. It has now raced ahead a second app, Lemon8, which is also operated by TikTok owner ByteDance and shares a strikingly similar user interface. New-user numbers swelled when the parent company linked the login functions of the two apps in November. Much like TikTok, Lemon8 went dark Saturday night, along with other ByteDance apps CapCut, Gauth and Hypic.
While a number of U.S. content creators have signaled that they are open to trying new apps, many are mourning the loss of what has in recent years become the most popular app in the world. Legions of content creators and influencers have amassed millions of fans on TikTok, quitting their jobs to go full-time online. Those with the highest follower tallies can earn thousands, if not millions of dollars, thanks to the app’s Creator Fund and brand deals. “I’m always going to say it’s changed our life, and I’m sure you’ve heard that from every other creator, but it literally has changed my life financially,” Benfield says.
The legal rumblings around TikTok began in mid-2022 after TikTok agreed to route its U.S. user data to Oracle’s cloud infrastructure, which in turn allowed Oracle to vet the app to ensure the platform was “free from outside influence.” In February 2023, the Biden administration banned the app from federal devices.
At a congressional hearing in March 2023, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew defended his app and downplayed its connections to China. His efforts made no impact; members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce came out in support of a U.S.-wide TikTok ban and in May, Montana became the first state to sign legislation banning the app (a federal judge blocked the ban before it took effect). A year later, in March 2024, the House of Representatives passed the TikTok bill.
Fast-forward to Friday, after various appeals, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law. The platform went dark Saturday night before coming back online Sunday morning. Donald Trump, the U.S. president as of Monday, told NBC News he would “most likely” give TikTok a 90-day reprieve from the ban. Trump instead signed an executive order titled “Application of Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act to TikTok” on his first day in office that instructs the attorney general to “not to take any action to enforce the Act for a period of 75 days.”
While many users were happy to have TikTok back, international user presence remains strong on RedNote. It’s easy to find videos on the platform of Chinese users welcoming their new “foreign friends” and “TikTok refugees” who have stuck with the app.
“I just never expected it to happen because for the longest time I feel like China and the rest of the world [were] kind of separated in terms of the type of content we consume, in terms of the type of news that we get, the source of the news that we get,” Angelene Sun, a Chinese influencer and businesswoman with over 600,000 followers on RedNote, tells THR.
The Northwestern University graduate, who lived in the States from 2011 to 2020, says that one night she was on a livestream on RedNote when suddenly her comment section was filled with Americans. This prompted her to make a video about the experience, captioned, “Guys, are we making history?”
“I don’t know how long this whole thing is going to last. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I think humanity has yet again proven itself to be the strongest bond among people with completely different upbringings and backgrounds,” Sun says in the video.
“It’s just the first time in my lifetime that I saw Westerners actually make an effort to come into our social media platform,” Sun tells THR. “At first [it was] kind of a revenge on the TikTok ban, but now people are actually enjoying it. I saw so many heartwarming exchanges and just seeing people actually sharing their lives directly to each other is just beautiful.”
She also notes that with an influx of new members from around the world, she’s been inspired to create new forms of content that can speak to both audiences.
“[RedNote is] a great transitional platform for people to ease into the Chinese culture,” Sun says. “I’m also very curious to see what other new functions the platform will push out in the future. I think that’s actually very essential for content creators from abroad to be here for a long time, and also just the tools for them to make money on this platform.”
It remains to be seen whether influencers or content creators can earn money through RedNote. It has historically been a rarity for foreign users to have easy access to Chinese apps. While U.S. content creators are no strangers to pivoting their content in order to build followings on a certain platform, RedNote is different than TikTok.
Sun has some advice for U.S. creators who want to build a following on the largely lifestyle-focused platform. “I think the perspective you pick has to be woman focused and from a woman’s perspective because there are so many girlies on this platform,” she says.
Her second suggestion — make organic content. “Don’t be pretentious,” Sun says, adding that recently she feels even her own content has become more commercial. “I’m not trying to show off or anything. I’m not even trying to show anything. I’m just sharing.”
Whether or not RedNote’s popularity in the U.S. will continue remains unclear. Content creators seem somewhat divided on the topic. “Do I think the longevity is there? No, not really,” Benfield says, but believes it’s “an interesting cultural exchange that’s happening in the midst of all of this.”
Sun, on the other hand, remains hopeful about the situation: “I’m more of a optimist about having Westerners coming to our social platform,” she says. “I think it’s beautiful. We love to see it.”
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