EGN NEWS DESK
TikTok obtained an obvious reprieve from being compelled to close down, however Americans on Monday have been nonetheless utilizing and downloading Xiaohongshu, the Chinese social media app that surged in reputation final week in anticipation of TikTok’s closure.
TikTok, owned by the Chinese web firm ByteDance, went darkish within the United States forward of a federal regulation requiring it to be offered or banned on Sunday. TikTok quickly got here again on-line after President-elect Donald J. Trump mentioned he would difficulty an government order to place off a ban as soon as he took workplace on Monday.
Many questions stay about TikTok’s destiny within the United States. For now, Xiaohongshu, which many individuals are calling RedNote, is leaning into its sudden movie star within the United States.
Over the weekend, Xiaohongshu added a function to let customers translate posts and feedback between Mandarin and English. On Monday it was on the high of Apple’s rating of most downloaded apps, a spot it has held for a lot of the previous week.
According to information on RedNote, 32.6 million notes have been posted with the hashtag “tiktok refugee” as of Monday, gaining 2.3 billion views.
Americans on the platform mentioned they deliberate to maintain posting on RedNote, although TikTok had come again on-line.
“TikTok is again. Will I nonetheless proceed utilizing this app? Absolutely,” a consumer within the United States posted. “I’m going nowhere.”
The preliminary customers of Xiaohongshu exterior of China needed to overcome important language obstacles. In interviews and on the app, early joiners mentioned they used instruments like ChatGPT and Google Translate to determine register accounts and work together with different customers, most of whom have been in China.
“I feel it’s actually cool that we’re seeing a totally totally different nation and seeing their cultural variations from ours and it’s all merging,” mentioned Sky Bynum, 18, who creates magnificence movies from her dwelling in New Jersey. “That’s one thing that you may’t do on TikTok or Instagram or Facebook or YouTube.”
Chinese customers have been additionally serving to their new social media buddies navigate China’s strict censorship. Don’t put up any pictures involving nudity or weapons, they suggested.
Americans have posted movies taking Chinese viewers alongside for a procuring journey to Walmart and speaking about how a lot it prices to take their 4 youngsters to dinner. The conversations have introduced up subjects which might be typically thought-about delicate on-line in China, together with whether or not individuals will be open about their sexuality and the lengthy hours that many work. On a video about how individuals in China’s tech trade work lengthy hours, commenters within the United States shared their job schedules engaged on oil rigs, in hospitals and at Taco Bell.
Although Xiaohongshu is extraordinarily in style in China, particularly amongst younger girls in massive cities, the corporate has saved a low profile. It has not up to date its English-language firm information web page in virtually two years.
Xiaohongshu has posted almost a dozen job openings day-after-day for the previous week on its recruitment web site. Among the positions listed have been one for an engineer to work on the platform’s “content material safety emergency response functionality building.” It can also be on the lookout for somebody to be in control of content material safety threat evaluation and evaluation, and interns with “wonderful written and spoken English abilities.”
Xiaohongshu, a privately held firm, is operated by Xingyin Information Technology, which relies in Shanghai and owned by the billionaire entrepreneurs Charlwin Mao and Miranda Qu. As of final July, Xiaohongshu had raised almost $1 billion because it was based over a decade in the past, in response to Crunchbase, from traders together with Alibaba, HongShan and Tencent, the Chinese web big behind the nation’s most ubiquitous app, WeChat.
The app lets customers share brief movies in addition to nonetheless, text-based posts, which typically appeal to lengthy, Reddit-like remark threads. Like TikTok, Xiaohongshu is powered by a proprietary algorithm, which recommends content material focused to maintain individuals scrolling.
