TikTok risks being banned from the US in the coming days as a bill signed by President Biden requires its parent company ByteDance to divest from the app. Amid the risk of a potential ban, users are already looking for alternatives – and another Chinese social network has just topped the US App Store rankings.
Chinese app ‘RedNote’ is now the #1 downloaded app in the US App Store
Xiaohongshu (known as RedNote in English) is a Chinese social network created in 2013 to compete with Pinterest and Instagram. The platform was primarily focused on letting users and influencers share product reviews with an integrated e-commerce. More recently, RedNote has also started investing in short videos, just like TikTok.
As noted by TechCrunch, RedNote has gone viral among younger Chinese users, especially during the pandemic. The platform has more than 300 million monthly active users – but it has never been a hit in other countries, at least until now.
Suddenly, RedNote became the most downloaded app in the US App Store, overtaking apps like ChatGPT, Threads, Instagram, and TikTok. The search for an alternative to TikTok is driving the increase in downloads of RedNote. The app has been widely promoted by creators encouraging their followers to migrate to the new platform.
Of course, there’s a chance that TikTok won’t end up being banned in the US since President-elect Trump has already hinted that he won’t let the ban happen. However, since creators can’t predict what will happen next, they want to make sure they don’t lose their followers.
Interestingly, creators have been recommending another Chinese app instead of a US-based app like Instagram. To recap, the US Department of Justice believes that the Chinese company behind TikTok shares user data with the Chinese government and also manipulates the content shown to US users to interfere in political affairs.
Only time will tell whether RedNote will become the next TikTok.
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