Ahead Of Potential Ban, Goldman Finds “TikTok Refugees” Worldwide Downloading This App

With four days remaining until TikTok is either sold or banned in the United States, hundreds of thousands of users have gravitated toward a Chinese app called RedNote, which some users call “China’s TikTok.” 

On Wednesday morning, RedNote was the top free-to-download app on the Apple App Store, followed by TikTok’s sister app Lemon8.

RedNote is a Shanghai-based social media app that allows users to share videos, post pictures, make text posts, and access shopping features, basically a clone of TikTok to some degree. 

“The last 48 hours marks a historical moment for the global social media platforms, as well as for a heavy user like me on a China social media platform called Xiaohongshu/little red book (小红书), now more popularly known in the US as the “Red Note,” Goldman’s Boya Yang wrote in a note to clients on the looming US TikTok ban. 

Yang noted that the shift by TikTok users toward other video-sharing apps has become a global phenomenon in recent days.

“While there are many other choice, such as Meta’s Reels, or Tiktok’s own Lemon 8, according to some posts from American users, there is a bit of rebel spirit that they look for something authentic China and locates in China, now that Tiktok is banned being owned by Chinese. And the trend starts to reinforce itself, in the US, and globally,” she said. 

Here’s additional color on the shift from the analyst working on the Hong Kong desk:

People start to notice this by seeing posts claiming themselves “Tiktok refugee“, sent by users with IP labeled “US” (yes there is always a label of location for either posts of comments on the app). In PM of Jan 13th, the tag of #tiktokrefugee had about 2k posts with 400k viewership, but as of writing, just two days after by now, the tag now has 310m viewership, with over 7m posts. There are similar tags like #tiktokban #AmericansAssemble it’s way more than these now – millions of posts flourishing from global locations without such a topic and with various content.

Yang noted while “Red Note being a private company, the related listcos incl platform tools and e-commerce suppliers, have been best performers for the past 48 hours, +8% the best-performing theme in China” this week.