TikTok "falls", Xiaohongshu "has enough"?

As TikTok faces a ban in the United States, a large number of American users have begun to look for alternative platforms. Xiaohongshu unexpectedly became their new choice and quickly climbed to the top of the free app rankings of the US App Store. This article will explore why Xiaohongshu has been able to stand out among many competitors and attract "TikTok refugees", as well as the challenges and opportunities it faces.

It is about to be banned in the United States, which is a "big bargain" for Xiaohongshu.

On January 13, a large number of American users who called themselves "TikTok refugees" began to flock to Xiaohongshu on a large scale. Currently, the app has become the number one app in the free app rankings of the US App Store.

Image source: US App Store

The US government previously required TikTok's parent company ByteDance to divest TikTok before January 19 on the grounds of so-called national security, otherwise it would face a ban, causing many American users to rush to find alternatives. One of the major advantages of Xiaohongshu's rapid popularity is that it allows registration with global mobile phone numbers, not just Chinese mobile phone numbers, which provides great convenience for American users.

In the past 24 hours, a large amount of English content has appeared on Xiaohongshu, and many American users have shared their daily life photos and videos on Xiaohongshu, calling themselves TikTok refugees from the United States. Interestingly, in the comment section, not only did some people introduce local Chinese food and beautiful scenery to American users, but some also played "Chinese memes" and claimed to teach American users to learn Chinese. As a result, many American users' notes quickly gained a lot of traffic in a short period of time.

In the past few years, Xiaohongshu has been striving to grow its user base and commercialize its products, and expanding into overseas markets is a key part of this. However, what Xiaohongshu did not expect was that this key expansion seemed to have been completed overnight.

TikTok suffered a setback in the United States, and Xiaohongshu unexpectedly received "huge traffic", but whether Xiaohongshu can retain American users and convert them into loyal users by virtue of this unexpected breakthrough, and further expand its international market share, remains an unknown.

1. Why not Kuaishou?

Once the ban takes effect, Google Play, App Store, etc. will have to stop supporting TikTok, but why do a large number of TikTok users choose Xiaohongshu instead of Kwai (the international version of Kuaishou)?

One is that Kwai’s strategic planning in overseas markets is not clear and stable enough.

In 2016, Kwai was first launched in South Korea and Russia, and gained a lot of traffic in a short period of time. The following year, Kwai decided to build on its success and continue to vigorously promote Kwai in Brazil, Indonesia, Russia and South Korea, attracting users through advertising, subsidies, and support for creators. Especially in South Korea, Kwai's downloads exceeded 10 million, driven by well-known artists such as IU and G-Dragon. In Indonesia and Russia, it quickly dominated the App rankings of Google Play and App Store.

However, Kwai's strategic planning in overseas markets has sometimes expanded aggressively and sometimes contracted and adjusted, resulting in its layout in multiple regions being temporarily shelved due to various problems. Due to the waste of dispersed resources, Kwai has always found it difficult to delve deeply into a specific market and establish a solid user base.

The second is that Kwai missed a key opportunity to rise.

In November 2017, after Kwai gave up on acquiring the short video app Musical.ly, ByteDance acquired it for US$1 billion and later integrated it with TikTok, which helped TikTok better enter the North American market and expand rapidly around the world.

At the same time, Kwai's development encountered setbacks and its business expansion fell into silence. Although Kwai restarted its business twice later, the results were always lukewarm. As a result, it could only focus on Brazil, Southeast Asia and other regions where TikTok's influence was slightly weaker. Therefore, after TikTok was banned, Kwai failed to quickly become an alternative for American users.

The third reason is that the promotion by TikTok’s big influencers has made Xiaohongshu famous.

As the effective date of the TikTok ban approaches, a TikTok celebrity, whattheish, released a short video in which she called Xiaohongshu the Chinese version of TikTok and called on fans to "switch" to Xiaohongshu. "I know where we are going after TikTok. I am almost certain that there is an app called RedNote, which is the Chinese version of TikTok that you can download from the App Store."

At the same time, some content creators with large numbers of followers on TikTok have since created Xiaohongshu accounts, such as Angelo Marasigan, who is famous for his Kim Kardashian impersonation and has about 14.9 million followers.

An American user also said in his note: "Many users on TikTok are posting tutorials to tell people how to get to Xiaohongshu. They want to use this method to express their protest against the US government."

2. It is difficult to accept "overwhelming wealth"

For Xiaohongshu, its sudden popularity in the United States will help it further expand its user base, but it seems that Xiaohongshu is still unable to catch this wave of "wealth".

First of all, Xiaohongshu's positioning in the overseas market is essentially a Chinese cultural community, which means that there is not much high-quality content suitable for American users on the platform. Many Americans want to use Xiaohongshu to make travel guides and find nearby food, but ultimately give up because they cannot understand Chinese, making it difficult to develop a habit of using it.

In fact, language barriers are a problem that Xiaohongshu needs to solve urgently. Since most Chinese users are not used to using English, and Xiaohongshu does not have a complete online translation function, there are many obstacles for American users to communicate with Chinese users. In order to communicate smoothly on Xiaohongshu, many American users have to use third-party translation software. For example, an American netizen said that he would first write a self-introduction in English, then translate it into Chinese using Google Translate, and read it aloud using a robot voice generator in the video for better communication and interaction.

Chinese users also complained that "it feels like reading comprehension" and "it hurts my head to read", and called on Xiaohongshu to launch an online translation function in a timely manner. A Chinese netizen told DoNews that in order to understand the content posted by American users, he had to use third-party translation software such as Baidu Translate and NetEase Youdao Dictionary to translate, and then translate the content he wanted to reply to into English, which was a very bad experience. It is still unknown how Xiaohongshu will improve its online translation function in the future, whether it will adopt a self-developed solution or introduce a third party.

Secondly, TikTok and Xiaohongshu are essentially different. For example, in terms of functional positioning, TikTok focuses on entertainment, focusing on short videos and live broadcasts, attracting young users to pursue creativity and visual impact, while Xiaohongshu focuses on social networking, e-commerce and content sharing, especially focusing on lifestyle sharing and consumption decisions; in terms of content form, TikTok is mainly short videos, emphasizing entertainment and visual effects, while Xiaohongshu is mainly graphic notes, supplemented by short videos, with more diverse content, focusing on life sharing and shopping recommendations. This means that it is difficult for American users to truly integrate into Xiaohongshu, and the retention rate is not high.

In addition, due to differences in content supervision requirements between countries, as well as data security and privacy protection, Chinese social apps going overseas are often divided into domestic and international versions, such as Douyin and TikTok, Kuaishou and Kwai.

But Xiaohongshu is not like this. Xiaohongshu, which started out as a platform for sharing global online shopping experiences, does not partition its content because it needs to allow domestic and foreign users to communicate more intuitively. Instead, global users share a content pool. In short, the content on Xiaohongshu is interoperable and is not divided into different regions for different countries. That is, Xiaohongshu downloaded by American users in the United States uses the same app as Chinese users.

The massive influx of American users into Xiaohongshu will generate a large amount of content with different cultural backgrounds and values, which will inevitably increase the pressure on Xiaohongshu's review and compliance. Therefore, Xiaohongshu needs to establish a more complete review mechanism that adapts to multiculturalism, ensuring the richness of content while also ensuring the compliance of the content. It can be seen that how to ensure that the massive content complies with community norms and laws and regulations will become a difficult task for Xiaohongshu.

Overall, if Xiaohongshu wants to successfully take advantage of this wave of traffic dividends, it needs to comprehensively consider risks, acceptance capabilities, traffic costs, etc. Whether Xiaohongshu will "win without effort" or just be a flash in the pan still needs the test of time.

3. Comprehensive acceleration of commercialization

Xiaohongshu has long been troubled by commercialization problems.

At the Xiaohongshu business co-creation conference, Xiaohongshu clarified the three major strategic directions of its commercial business in 2025: first, in terms of industry, it will expand from focusing on consumer goods to meeting the needs of multiple industries, with a focus on breakthroughs in clue industries such as life services; second, in terms of commercial product capabilities, it will focus more on optimizing the delivery of grass-seeding content, improving post-investment measurement capabilities, and directly delivering customer business leads; third, in terms of ecology, it will move towards greater openness and will directly connect with more platforms, merchant brands in different industries, MCN agencies, etc. in the future.

In short, these three directions can be summarized as industry expansion, product infrastructure and ecological openness. It is expected that in 2025, the trend from "planting grass" to "business success" on the Xiaohongshu platform will be further strengthened.

Despite this, Xiaohongshu still faces many challenges.

As Xiaohongshu develops, the problems of content homogeneity and low quality have gradually become prominent. In order to pursue traffic and exposure, a large number of users publish similar content that lacks innovation and depth. This not only reduces the user's reading experience, but also makes it difficult for brands to find high-quality and unique content carriers when placing advertisements, affecting advertising effectiveness and commercial conversion.

At the same time, in order to achieve its commercialization goals, Xiaohongshu may increase the proportion of advertising and commercial promotion, which will inevitably have a certain impact on user experience and content ecology.

In addition, Xiaohongshu's e-commerce business still has not gotten rid of the defect of "making wedding clothes for others". Xiaohongshu users mainly share and obtain life experiences and recommend products. After seeing the products they like on the platform, many users are accustomed to buying them on other e-commerce platforms, which makes Xiaohongshu's e-commerce conversion rate low and limits its commercialization ability.

For Xiaohongshu, the massive influx of "TikTok refugees" is an unprecedented opportunity, as well as an opportunity to expand into the international market and accelerate the commercialization process. TikTok has about 170 million American users. If Xiaohongshu can cope with a series of challenges, it will be expected to successfully gain a foothold in the overseas market.

Written by | Zhang Yu Edited by | Yang Bocheng