| ▲ | hintymad 11 hours 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 11 hours 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 11 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Xiaohongshu is generally known as RedNote outside of China. | | |
| ▲ | logancbrown 11 hours 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 10 hours 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 11 hours 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 11 hours 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 hours 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 4 hours 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 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | That’s an extremely recent development caused by the TT shutdown looming. | |
| ▲ | toomanyrichies 10 hours 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 9 hours 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 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yes it's called a meme and it won't last. | |
| ▲ | 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | pantalaimon 10 hours 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 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Which is honestly weird. It's Little Red Book, not Red Note, in reference to Mao's little red book. | | |
| ▲ | lupire 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | "Little Red Book" doesn't resonate with people outside China |
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| ▲ | mytailorisrich 11 hours 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 11 hours 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 11 hours 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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| ▲ | throwthrowrow 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | paulddraper 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Good to meet you fellow American. | |
| ▲ | cscurmudgeon 2 hours 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. | | |
| ▲ | _tik_ 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | You should provide more reliable and trusted sources. The link you shared here originates from Falun Gong, a cult. |
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| ▲ | hintymad 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | 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. |
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| ▲ | deepsun 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Re. copycats -- VK was also a blatant copycat of Facebook, down to copy-pasted CSS styles. |
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| ▲ | kgeist 11 hours ago | parent [-] | | The very first versions, IIRC. Now they have diverged completely. |
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