The user influx in the United States continues, what will Xiaohongshu do next?

As the TikTok ban approaches, a large number of American users have flocked to Xiaohongshu, causing it to quickly climb to the top of the US app rankings. This phenomenon has not only attracted widespread attention, but also brought unprecedented challenges and opportunities to Xiaohongshu. This article will explore how Xiaohongshu copes with this wave of transnational users, analyze the cultural differences, content management, user retention and other issues it faces, and Xiaohongshu's next strategy on the road to internationalization.

The US government's ban on TikTok has entered the countdown, and US Tik Tok users are finally unable to sit still. Overnight, they flocked to Xiaohongshu, a Chinese community platform that they call the "Red Box."

This Chinese app, which is far less well-known in the United States than Tik Tok, topped the app list of the US App Store in just one day. Following it is Lemon8, a dual-stream lifestyle community that ByteDance imitated Xiaohongshu, and its download volume also soared.

According to statistics from The Guardian, more than 500,000 "Tiktok refugees" have flocked to Xiaohongshu since last week. And data from Sensor Tower shows that Xiaohongshu only had about 1.3 million users in the United States in December 2024.

In fact, because it is not region-locked, Xiaohongshu is not completely unfamiliar overseas, and its "listen to advice" culture was even popular in Europe and the United States for a time.

The Wall Street Journal reported on April 2, 2024 that Xiaohongshu is an app that combines the functions of Instagram and Reddit (entertainment, social and news website). It is regarded as a "life bible" and is becoming a fashion guide for young Americans to "listen to advice."

However, everything in front of them is unfamiliar to both parties. When concepts such as "the world is flat" and "global village" move from paper to reality, everyone needs to re-understand and face them. What happened in the past few days will definitely be recorded in the history of the Internet.

While the outside world is cheering for Xiaohongshu to receive this huge amount of traffic, perhaps we should be more wary of its possible negative effects.

1. A cross-national collision

Overnight, Xiaohongshu's painting style changed suddenly.

A large number of videos shot by foreigners with their faces up close appeared on the homepage, leaving many Chinese users confused and thinking they had entered the wrong app. These users from the United States called themselves "Tiktok Refugees" and explained the reasons for switching to Xiaohongshu and expressed their dissatisfaction with the US government's ban on Tik Tok. They were humble and friendly, and some even warned their compatriots to be careful when they came here.

Some people also said bluntly, "I have no idea what I am doing here. I can't even understand the rules."

In just one day, this group of "outsider users" made the #tiktokrefugee topic popular. As of now, the topic has been viewed 400 million times, and as of yesterday afternoon, it had been viewed 67.9 million times.

Consistent with their habit of using Tik Tok, the first content posted by this group of people on Xiaohongshu is mostly video content. On the homepage, one can even see a live broadcast room where users from multiple countries are discussing the "refugee migration journey" through voice chat.

Some American users who had already joined Xiaohongshu were also caught up in the incident and were mistakenly regarded as "Tiktok refugees" by Chinese netizens. They had to post a video to clarify that "I am not a refugee, I am an indigenous person."

Domestic users were also excited due to the unexpected intrusion of foreign friends.

They lamented that "Xiaohongshu is now very suitable for practicing English listening", and sent some garbled Chinese words to deliberately make it difficult for the other party to use machine translation. Some people also sent cloze questions on English test papers to ask foreign bloggers for help.

Xinmei Daybreak observed that these new users can accumulate tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of fans in a short period of time with just a few or a dozen pictures, texts, and videos.

Some domestic users feel that it is too easy for this wave of foreign users to gain traffic. A user located in Zhejiang expressed dissatisfaction, "Xiaohongshu's market was already very crowded, and they grabbed more advertising and traffic."

The homogenized content brought about by the influx of a large number of multinational users has also caused discomfort to local users to a certain extent.

Many domestic users have reported that, "After half a day's hard work, my Xiaohongshu has been successfully updated to the full English version, and there is basically no domestic content"; "It's quite interesting to refresh a few pages occasionally, but the whole page is full of them, and the same is true when I refresh further"; "It keeps pushing content, so annoying, give me back the previous content."

Some users also feel that the platform adjusts its algorithm very quickly. "After watching several videos related to Refugee in a row, the homepage will push related videos. But if the user does not want to watch a certain related video and searches for other keywords, other keyword-related videos will be recommended immediately."

2. Why Xiaohongshu?

Previously, the outside world had noticed that Lemon8 and Xiaohongshu had reached the top 2 of the APP Store US download list. Lemon8 is another overseas product of ByteDance, and its product form is similar to Xiaohongshu. In just one day, Xiaohongshu became the first on the list.

With the traffic overflow caused by the Tik Tok ban, why has Xiaohongshu become the first choice of "refuge" instead of the domestic version of Douyin APP parallel to Tik Tok, nor Lemon8?

The most common reason is that US numbers can only download Tik Tok to watch videos, but cannot register an account to comment, like or interact. A user with an IP in New Zealand mentioned that Tik Tok is a version within the Great Firewall and cannot be registered outside the Great Firewall. Tik Tok and Tik Tok are the apps that she has seen that block accounts from different regions the most strictly.

In addition, TikTok may not be as well-known abroad as people imagine. A user with an IP in the United States said that TikTok is not available in the US APP store, but Xiaohongshu is.

Another user whose IP is shown in the United States also mentioned, "To be honest, we don't know much about your world or the applications that can be found closer. We don't know much about TikTok, so we chose something that is easier to find. We are adapting in our own way, but I look forward to Honghe (Xiaohongshu)."

However, some people also believe that Xiaohongshu's picture and text community is similar to Instagram, which has a certain appeal to foreign users. You should know that in the early days, Xiaohongshu started out as an overseas shopping platform, and in order to attract the overseas student group, it did not strictly restrict the user registration method.

Another blogger gave another explanation: "Everyone downloaded Xiaohongshu because they thought it was the Chinese version of Tik Tok. I think this will definitely be written into the history of the Internet."

Although Lemon8, which is highly similar to Xiaohongshu, has also seen a significant increase in users recently, it has not created a news effect.

Perhaps it was a combination of coincidences that Xiaohongshu, a brand and an app, became the source of this wave of sudden traffic because it did not restrict registration and use by domestic and foreign users.

How long can these external users stay on Xiaohongshu and how is their retention rate?

Currently, the topics discussed by overseas users are mainly about showing off pets and language memes, and bloggers who show off their talents and good looks are also watched.

A domestic user thought that the other party would not play for too long, because the foreigner's posts were short, and the language barrier would reduce the sense of interaction and participation of domestic users. After all, the essence of Xiaohongshu is to value the depth of the discussion of the post. The scope can be narrowed down to a certain circle or a certain thing. The poster will talk at length, and the two sides will go back and forth.

Some people also believe that the two sides can coexist in one community. As long as Xiaohongshu is strong enough to form an algorithmic circle, similar to Twitter, people of different languages ​​can come together to discuss.

Of course, the most important factor is regulation. There has never been a moment in the history of China's Internet where so many people from other countries have emerged in the virtual space. This is a new proposition for regulation. For Xiaohongshu, whether this incident will have a positive or negative effect is still unknown.

For a community, a certain scale will form a self-growth effect, and UGC production is a typical example of "one for all, all for one". However, no one knows for sure whether the absolute scale will enhance or weaken the self-growth effect.

Written by Li Huan, edited by Zhai Wenting. This article is written by the author of Operation Party [Xinmei daybreak], WeChat public account: [Xinmei daybreak]. It is originally created/authorized to be published on Operation Party. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.

The title image is from Unsplash, based on the CC0 protocol.