As Trump’s imminent ban looms over TikTok, users breathe new life into some barely known apps in Apple and Google stores. The app that has so far appeared to gain the most is a Chinese social media app called “RedNote” or Xiaohongshu, which translates to “little red book”.
It now ranks as the number one app in Apple’s App Store and 34th in Google’s Play Store for apps. RedNote has been on the rise lately as many TikTok users have started sharing their first experiences and encounters with the Chinese application. On the other hand, many creators on RedNote have posted videos about ‘TikTok refugees’ joining the platform.
It is structured very similarly to TikTok where you can move through feed-like content of brief videos selected by your interests. Unfortunately, a lot of the user interface is in Chinese so the user experience may be slightly confusing and some videos on TikTok give the steps on how to change the language of the app to English.
Still, RedNote, without much prior fanfare, has been widely used in China for several years now. According to CNBC, the app developed more than a decade ago competes with Douyin and Alibaba’s e-commerce app with around 300 million users.
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RedNote isn’t the only app that’s benefited from twitchy TikTok citizens, but its features do not leave much to the imagination. Subsidiary of ByteDance – Lemon8 is also popular in both application stores, where its ranking is the second for Apple Store, and the first for Google Store. But while TikTok itself has at times promoted the app, Lemon8 will likely suffer the same fate as TikTok should the Supreme Court agree with the Biden Administration, which appears probable.
Another video app called Flip, which describes itself as “where social meets shopping,” is also trending in both app stores. The app, from Los Angeles-based Humans, Inc., features short form videos and an in-app storefront. It’s currently ranked number 14 in Google’s store and number four in Apple’s. The company was valued at more than $1 billion last year, according to Crunchbase.
Adding to that list is another app that seems to have already gained from the looming ban on TikTok – ReelShort. Despite the name Reely, which is a combination of Instagram’s Reels and YouTube Shorts, both of which are quite successful TikTok clones, the app is more like a wannabe streaming service. The idea is simple: the application has short fragments of longer sequences called “movies” with odd names like ‘The Heiress Blacklisted her Husband’ or ‘In Love with the Alpha’. ReelShort is ranked number seven in the App Store and number two in Google Play.
None of these apps is likely to stick around for the long term, but the fact that so many obscure apps with such little }); fame and recognition have been able to dominate the top rankings of theirs & iTunes stores so quickly is yet another indicator of just how powerful TikTok’s audience & influencers are. It also points out that it will not solve the problem of other Chinese technology firms in the US if TikTok is banned.
