{"id":626548,"date":"2023-04-07T09:49:11","date_gmt":"2023-04-07T14:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/07\/with-latest-hit-lemon8-bytedance-again-learns-from-the-china-playbook\/"},"modified":"2023-04-07T09:49:11","modified_gmt":"2023-04-07T14:49:11","slug":"with-latest-hit-lemon8-bytedance-again-learns-from-the-china-playbook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/04\/07\/with-latest-hit-lemon8-bytedance-again-learns-from-the-china-playbook\/","title":{"rendered":"With latest hit Lemon8, ByteDance again learns from the China playbook"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The app strikes a great resemblance to Xiaohongshu, a Chinese social media platform with 260M MAUs<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

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Amid a wave<\/span> of heated debate over whether TikTok should be banned, another ByteDance product, Lemon8, has popped up and quickly climbed into the top 10 on America\u2019s app stores<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lemon8\u2019s sudden rise is reminiscent of TikTok\u2019s early-day growth. At the time Vine had already pioneered short video sharing in the U.S., but TikTok took the media format to the next level through its content recommendation algorithms, a system that had <\/span>proven immensely successful in China for its sister app, Douyin.<\/p>\n

Some industry observers are now describing Lemon8 as something at the crossroad of Instagram, Pinterest and Amazon, but those familiar with the Chinese internet ecosystem would immediately recognize that the app is an instance of \u201ccopy-from-China\u201d.<\/p>\n

For much of China\u2019s early internet history, entrepreneurs found inspiration in trends with strong momentum in the U.S. and build something comparable in China, giving rise to the country\u2019s answers to Google, Facebook and the likes. That practice is still here, as indicated by the clutch of companies that express their ambitions to become China\u2019s OpenAI<\/a>; but a reversal of the trend is also taking shape as China\u2019s homegrown tech talent becomes more sophisticated and come up with increasingly novel services that don\u2019t yet exist abroad.<\/p>\n

At a glance, Lemon8\u2019s photo-heavy layout and peer-to-peer reviews strike a great resemblance to Xiaohongshu, the Chinese social commerce platform with 260 million monthly active users<\/a>. Xiaohongshu, which means \u201cLittle Red Book\u201d, has over the past decade become the go-to online community for Chinese youngsters to learn life hacks in areas ranging from maternity health and surviving centralized quarantine in China to finding the best Chinese restaurants in D\u00fcsseldorf<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Bike sharing, live shopping and social commerce are a just few Chinese internet business models that have found users abroad. Xiaohongshu has dabbled in other Asian markets through Uniik and Spark, but neither took off.\u00a0Now ByteDance is taking the playbook of Xiaohongshu westward, mirroring TikTok has done with learning from Douyin\u2019s model back home.<\/p>\n

The Little Red Playbook<\/h2>\n
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Image Credits:<\/strong> Xiaohongshu<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Founded as a platform for sharing overseas shopping guides, Xiaohongshu has mostly kept its focus on corralling practical information. Posts are arranged in a Pinterest-like grid but ranked partly by the number of \u201csaves\u201d they get. And unlike Instagram, there\u2019s little competition to post the most glamorous photos. Rather, images are used to contextualize the notes posted by users, such as a COVID-19 PCR result needed to board a flight to China.<\/p>\n

Rather than favoring professionally made influencer posts, the app encourages the discovery of long-tail content and stresses relevance over entertainment. When users are on Xiaohongshu, they are experiencing what\u2019s called \u201czhongcao\u201d, literally \u201cplanting grass,\u201d a concept popularized by the platform to convey the effect of wanting to buy something after seeing someone else, whether a friend or influencer, recommends it.<\/p>\n

Of Xiaohongshu\u2019s 260 million MAUs, 69 million of them are content creators, the company said<\/a> at a recent event. Seventy percent of its users are female and born after 1990. Most of its users live in China\u2019s more prosperous, top-tier cities. At its peak, the company\u2019s valuation reached $20 billion but reportedly dropped to $10-$16 billion<\/a> last year as China\u2019s tech crackdown dampened investor confidence.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s too early to say if Lemon8 can bring the zhongcao culture to the U.S. and beyond. For now, most of the app\u2019s traction seems to stem largely from splashy advertisements and influencer endorsement through TikTok<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are also signs<\/a> that Lemon8 is paying influencers to post content. This is a common practice seen amongst Chinese social media platforms, including Douyin. But this might also be the biggest difference that separates Lemon8 from Xiaohongshu, which has rarely shelled out large subsidies to influencers. Authenticity, many argue, is the reason why Xiaohongshu\u2019s content has stood the test of time.<\/p>\n

In its infancy, Lemon8 is probably still far from thinking about monetization, but it\u2019d be interesting to see what steps it takes to make money if and when the app accumulates a sizable user base. It might look to Xiaohongshu, which currently monetizes through ads and e-commerce commissions. Of course, it\u2019s never easy to simply transport an existing business model from one country to another, be it copy to or from China. Even ByteDance\u2019s mammoth has struggled<\/a> to evangelize live shopping, which is now driving a big chunk of Douyin\u2019s China revenues, in Western countries.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Rita Liao<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The app strikes a great resemblance to Xiaohongshu, a Chinese social media platform with 260M MAUs Amid a wave of heated debate over whether TikTok should be banned, another ByteDance product, Lemon8, has popped up and quickly climbed into the top 10 on America\u2019s app stores. Lemon8\u2019s sudden rise is reminiscent of TikTok\u2019s early-day growth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":626549,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[518,1284,46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-626548","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-latest","8":"category-lemon","9":"category-technology"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=626548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/626548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/626549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=626548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=626548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=626548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}