With newest hit Lemon8, ByteDance once more learns from the China playbook

The app strikes an important resemblance to Xiaohongshu, a Chinese language social media platform with 260M MAUs

Amid a wave of heated debate over whether or not TikTok must be banned, one other ByteDance product, Lemon8, has popped up and shortly climbed into the highest 10 on America’s app shops.

Lemon8’s sudden rise is harking back to TikTok’s early-day progress. On the time Vine had already pioneered quick video sharing within the U.S., however TikTok took the media format to the following stage via its content material suggestion algorithms, a system that had confirmed immensely profitable in China for its sister app, Douyin.

Some business observers are actually describing Lemon8 as one thing on the crossroad of Instagram, Pinterest and Amazon, however these aware of the Chinese language web ecosystem would instantly acknowledge that the app is an occasion of “copy-from-China”.

For a lot of China’s early web historical past, entrepreneurs discovered inspiration in tendencies with robust momentum within the U.S. and construct one thing comparable in China, giving rise to the nation’s solutions to Google, Fb and the likes. That observe continues to be right here, as indicated by the clutch of corporations that categorical their ambitions to change into China’s OpenAI; however a reversal of the development can also be taking form as China’s homegrown tech expertise turns into extra refined and provide you with more and more novel companies that don’t but exist overseas.

At a look, Lemon8’s photo-heavy format and peer-to-peer opinions strike an important resemblance to Xiaohongshu, the Chinese language social commerce platform with 260 million month-to-month lively customers. Xiaohongshu, which implies “Little Crimson E book”, has over the previous decade change into the go-to on-line group for Chinese language kids to study life hacks in areas starting from maternity well being and surviving centralized quarantine in China to discovering the perfect Chinese language eating places in Düsseldorf.

Bike sharing, stay procuring and social commerce are a simply few Chinese language web enterprise fashions which have discovered customers overseas. Xiaohongshu has dabbled in different Asian markets via Uniik and Spark, however neither took off. Now ByteDance is taking the playbook of Xiaohongshu westward, mirroring TikTok has carried out with studying from Douyin’s mannequin again house.

The Little Crimson Playbook

Picture Credit: Xiaohongshu

Based as a platform for sharing abroad procuring guides, Xiaohongshu has largely saved its deal with corralling sensible data. Posts are organized in a Pinterest-like grid however ranked partly by the variety of “saves” they get. And in contrast to Instagram, there’s little competitors to submit probably the most glamorous photographs. Moderately, pictures are used to contextualize the notes posted by customers, resembling a COVID-19 PCR end result wanted to board a flight to China.

Moderately than favoring professionally made influencer posts, the app encourages the invention of long-tail content material and stresses relevance over leisure. When customers are on Xiaohongshu, they’re experiencing what’s known as “zhongcao”, actually “planting grass,” an idea popularized by the platform to convey the impact of wanting to purchase one thing after seeing another person, whether or not a good friend or influencer, recommends it.

Of Xiaohongshu’s 260 million MAUs, 69 million of them are content material creators, the corporate stated at a current occasion. Seventy % of its customers are feminine and born after 1990. Most of its customers stay in China’s extra affluent, top-tier cities. At its peak, the corporate’s valuation reached $20 billion however reportedly dropped to $10-$16 billion final 12 months as China’s tech crackdown dampened investor confidence.

It’s too early to say if Lemon8 can convey the zhongcao tradition to the U.S. and past. For now, many of the app’s traction appears to stem largely from splashy ads and influencer endorsement via TikTok.

There are additionally indicators that Lemon8 is paying influencers to submit content material. It is a widespread observe seen amongst Chinese language social media platforms, together with Douyin. However this may additionally be the most important distinction that separates Lemon8 from Xiaohongshu, which has not often shelled out massive subsidies to influencers. Authenticity, many argue, is the explanation why Xiaohongshu’s content material has stood the take a look at of time.

In its infancy, Lemon8 might be nonetheless removed from eager about monetization, nevertheless it’d be attention-grabbing to see what steps it takes to become profitable if and when the app accumulates a large consumer base. It would look to Xiaohongshu, which presently monetizes via adverts and e-commerce commissions. After all, it’s by no means simple to easily transport an present enterprise mannequin from one nation to a different, be it copy to or from China. Even ByteDance’s mammoth has struggled to evangelize stay procuring, which is now driving a giant chunk of Douyin’s China revenues, in Western nations.