RedNote Rises

When people first started buzzing about "RedNote," I had no idea what they were talking about. In my head, it’s always been Xiaohongshu (小红书)—Little Red Book. Yeah, a homage to that Little Red Book, Mao’s communist manifesto of sorts. Given that connection, it makes sense why they’d opt for "RedNote" internationally. A little less, shall we say, political.

But here’s the wild thing: in just one day this week, nearly 3 million Americans downloaded RedNote. That’s a flood of self-proclaimed “TikTok Refugees” fleeing a U.S. government ban on the app over national security concerns. According to analytics from Similarweb, RedNote went from 700,000 daily active users in the U.S. to a whopping 3.4 million overnight—and a mere 300,000 the week before.

The TikTok exodus isn’t just driving RedNote downloads—it’s also dethroning ByteDance’s other app, Lemon8, which only saw a moderate bump in users. As of Monday, Lemon8 had 1.7 million daily active users in the U.S., up from 1.1 million. Meanwhile, TikTok is bleeding stateside users, dropping 2.1% week-over-week to 82.2 million daily actives.

A Tale of Two Cultures

Chinese users on RedNote seem intrigued by their new American neighbors. Posts answering questions about Chinese cuisine, tourist hotspots, and even the country’s birth policies are cropping up everywhere. But it hasn’t all been kumbaya. U.S. users have a knack for pushing boundaries, testing how far Beijing’s Great Firewall is willing to bend.

The cultural clash has spawned a new buzzword: “早C晚A” (Zǎo C Wǎn A)—Vitamin C in the morning, Vitamin A at night. Originally a skincare tip, it’s now a cheeky metaphor for RedNote’s shifting demographics: Chinese in the Morning, Americans After Dark. While Chinese users sleep, Americans are posting memes, recipes, and whatever else TikTok refugees are compelled to share.

The Bigger Picture

TikTok has been in a tailspin since the U.S. ban passed and the January 19 deadline is now staring users dead in the face. Creators with careers and followings on TikTok held out hope for a last-minute reprieve, but this week, resignation set in. If TikTok can’t survive in the U.S., RedNote might just be the lifeboat people climb aboard.

RedNote is having its moment, climbing the app charts and bridging two cultures, whether it likes it or not. Whether this flood of TikTok Refugees sticks around, though? That’s a story yet to be written.

Did You Dig This?

If you loved this article, smash that share button. Forward it to a friend who won’t stop scrolling TikTok, and tell them to start thinking “Red.” Oh, and hit reply to let me know what you think—I read every single email.