RedNote attracts nearly 3 million “TikTok refugees” in one day

Social media app RedNote — known in China as Xiaohongshu — attracted nearly 3 million users in the United States in a single day earlier this week, as a wave of self-proclaimed “TikTok refugees” joined.

The Chinese-language app had about 3.4 million daily active users across both iOS and Android devices in the US as of January 13, up from less than 700,000 the day before and about 300,000 the week before, according to data from analytics firm Similarweb.

"TikTok refugees" flock to social media platform RedNote, another Chinese app.

The wave of users flocking to the app is due to the impending ban on TikTok, which has 170 million users in the US, over national security concerns.

Data shows that even more U.S. users are switching to RedNote this week than ever before, explaining the app's dramatic rise to the top of download charts in U.S. app stores. Reuters reported on Tuesday that 700,000 new users joined RedNote in just two days.

That shows the RedNote platform is outpacing TikTok's sister app Lemon8, which also saw a surge after parent company ByteDance linked the two apps' login functions in November 2024.

According to Similarweb, Lemon8 had 1.7 million daily active users in the United States (as of January 13), up from about 1.1 million users the week before. Meanwhile, TikTok usage in the United States was already declining before the ban, down 2.1% from the week before to about 82.2 million daily active users.

Many Chinese users on RedNote have welcomed the newcomers and enthusiastically answered questions on topics such as popular foods, tourist attractions and even China's birth policy, although there are also signs that American users are testing the limits set by Beijing's censors.

For years, China has tightly controlled cyberspace through its "Great Firewall" censorship architecture and blocked foreign social networks like Instagram and X.

US users on TikTok have been hoping for months that the app would find a way around the US ban, but began showing signs of abandoning ByteDance's platform this week as the January 19 deadline approached.

Source: https://www.baogiaothong.vn/rednote-thu-hut-gan-3-trieu-nguoi-ti-nan-tiktok-trong-mot-ngay-192250117132706088.htm