| ▲ | hintymad 6 months ago |
| > This is going to be an interesting experiment: A widely used social network across the world WITHOUT american content. China has had such social networks for a long time. Their Weibo and Xiaohongshu are two prominent examples. Weibo started as a copycat of Twitter, but then beats Twitter hands-down with faster iterations, better features, and more vibrant user engagement despite the gross censorship imposed by the government. My guess is that TT can still thrive without American content, as long as other governments do not interfere as the US did. A potential threat to TT is that the US still has the best consumer market, so creators may still flock to a credible TT-alternative for better monetization, thus snatching away TT's current user base in other countries. |
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| ▲ | myrloc 6 months ago | parent | next [-] |
| Are Weibo and Xiaohongshu used widely outside of China? Given the names alone I'd imagine their adoption is fairly limited to China. |
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| ▲ | bryanlarsen 6 months ago | parent | next [-] | | Xiaohongshu is generally known as RedNote outside of China. | | |
| ▲ | logancbrown 6 months ago | parent | next [-] | | To directly answer the question, Rednote is not generally used outside China, and the point about these apps being representative of "global" social media apps is false. | | |
| ▲ | dluan 6 months ago | parent | next [-] | | Xiaohongshu is used by a lot of huaqiao outside of China. It has a sizeable overseas userbase, but it also has 300M total users. | | | |
| ▲ | bryanlarsen 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | RedNote was #1 on the App Store download list for a couple of days. https://www.vice.com/en/article/chinese-app-rednote-hits-1-i... | | |
| ▲ | xmprt 6 months ago | parent | next [-] | | So was this app at one point in time: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/9/21058399/david-dobrik-disp... It's called Dispo. You probably haven't heard of it because it became almost irrelevant a few weeks after launch. #1 on the app store doesn't mean a whole lot. | | |
| ▲ | MisoRamen 6 months ago | parent [-] | | RedNote is a bit different: it has been wildly popular in China for a number of years, and the Chinese community has been using it overseas already. It may not retain all the new users, but it is not going to become irrelevant. | | |
| ▲ | xmprt 6 months ago | parent [-] | | I agree. But I'm just saying that #1 on the app store doesn't preclude something from being a fad and my guess is that in 1 month's time, no one is going to be talking about RedNote outside of Chinese communities. |
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| ▲ | drakythe 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That’s an extremely recent development caused by the TT shutdown looming. | |
| ▲ | toomanyrichies 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | How many of those downloads originated in China? Genuine question, I read the article and it doesn't say. Apple's App Store is available in China, and China's population alone could be skewing those numbers. | | |
| ▲ | SXX 6 months ago | parent [-] | | App store top apps are per-region. And China one likely even running on completely different infrastructure because CCP. |
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| ▲ | throwawayq3423 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yes it's called a meme and it won't last. | |
| ▲ | 6 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | pantalaimon 6 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | It received some popularity among TikTok refugees from the US and subsequently also from around the world by users who got curios about what the fuzz was all about. |
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| ▲ | ameister14 6 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | Which is honestly weird. It's Little Red Book, not Red Note, in reference to Mao's little red book. | | |
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| ▲ | mytailorisrich 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Xiaohingshu is widely used outside China... by Chinese. My experience in the UK is that the whole Chinese community is on it for anything (discussions, classifieds...) instead of Facebook, Insta, etc. | | | |
| ▲ | hintymad 6 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | Yeah, if "widely used" means that multiple nations and cultures use the service, then they are not widely used. |
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| ▲ | gklitz 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > creators may still flock to a credible TT-alternative for better monetization Seems people are already mass migrating to Rednote. I’m not sure how that plays out though. |
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| ▲ | hintymad 6 months ago | parent | next [-] | | Yeah, me neither. Some analysis said the absolute number is large but the percentage is still small. And the migration is more about protesting. Xiaohongshu will need to come up with better monetization schemes too. | |
| ▲ | throwthrowrow 6 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | I think it will be a temporary phenomenon. Tiktok people arrived on RedNote last week and were jaw-droppingly amazed at videos of flashy modern Chinese cities, natural wonders (Guilin mountains), beautifully dressed young men and women, tasty food, Luigi fandom, and cute cats. For many it was a revelation that the US government/media complex has been systematically lying to them about China. They are arriving at an acceptance that the US is a shabby declining empire dominated by a corrupt elite and heartless broligarchs. Always a good thing to bump up against reality, imho. However I think that the US-based population of Tiktok refugees will subside once the novelty effect has worn off. Probably shrink by half in a month. Hopefully there will remain a positive lingering effect. | | |
| ▲ | dh5 6 months ago | parent | next [-] | | I think you deserve your 50 cents for this post. | | | |
| ▲ | paulddraper 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Good to meet you fellow American. | |
| ▲ | cscurmudgeon 6 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | > many it was a revelation that the US government/media complex has been systematically lying to them about China. The rational and data-based take is that the CCP censors negative content about China on Red Book. See [1], [2] and [3] from David Zhang, and you can verify this on your own. [1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/LKR8-AxFvJY
[2] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/4tMxW77lFBA
[3] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/N65jFr061_o
If China is so developed, why does it fight for developing nation status?https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202305/1290627.shtml > They are arriving at an acceptance that the US is a shabby declining empire dominated by a corrupt elite and heartless broligarchs. Always a good thing to bump up against reality, imho. Try making this comment about China in Red Book and see how long it lasts. Can you post a video about use of gutter oil in China on Red Book? You can post a video about drug use in SF on Twitter and not get banned. | | |
| ▲ | DiogenesKynikos 5 months ago | parent | next [-] | | > If China is so developed, why does it fight for developing nation status? Because overall, China is still much poorer than the developed world (Western Europe, USA, Japan, etc.). China has some amazing infrastructure and beautiful cities, and many cities, like Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen, are now quite developed, but on the whole, the country still has a ways to go. > The rational and data-based take is that the CCP censors negative content about China on Red Book. [...] Can you post a video about use of gutter oil in China on Red Book? There is heavy censorship in China, but there's also heavy propaganda about China in the US. Case in point: the videos you linked to come from Falun Gong media, run by a Scientology-like cult that somehow has tons of money (maybe from a 3-letter agency) to spread their own propaganda in the US. | |
| ▲ | _tik_ 6 months ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You should provide more reliable and trusted sources. The link you shared here originates from Falun Gong, a cult. | |
| ▲ | Dalewyn 6 months ago | parent | prev [-] | | >If China is so developed, why does it fight for developing nation status? Because "developing nation" status confers certain exemptions and benefits. China is ruthless about (ab)using every possible trick in the rulebook to take and hold the higher ground, this is just one such example. |
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| ▲ | deepsun 6 months ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Re. copycats -- VK was also a blatant copycat of Facebook, down to copy-pasted CSS styles. |
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| ▲ | kgeist 6 months ago | parent [-] | | The very first versions, IIRC. Now they have diverged completely. | | |
| ▲ | wruza 5 months ago | parent [-] | | The very first versions. VK was just better from the times it only started attracting users. |
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