Jake’s Take: Xiaohongshu (RedNote)’s US Surge and What It Means for Brands

Fascinating to see the surge in U.S. downloads of Xiaohongshu / Little Red Book (which people are calling RedNote) in response to the potential TiKTok ban. 

It’s intriguing that TikTok users are jumping to Xiaohongshu because the platforms are very different.

The TikTok feed is an endless scroll of short videos that take up the entire screen, whereas the Xiaohongshu feed is akin to Pinterest with multiple posts visible at once—and posts contain photos and videos accompanied with lengthy text. See below. There is an official English version of the interface, but most content is in Chinese.

‘There’s are some overlaps in the types of user-generated content, but Xiaohongshu functions as a lifestyle guide for food/beauty/fashion recommendations, whereas TikTok is more entertainment-focused—you don’t see “TikTok dances” going around Xiaohongshu.

Some American users are mistakenly calling Xiaohongshu the “Chinese TikTok”—but in terms of platform design and user behaviour, that wouldn’t be accurate even if Douyin didn’t exist.

One similarity is that both platforms are based on interest graph algorithms, serving content on the homepage that is relevant to users’ interests and past viewing patterns. Content is tagged and easily searchable, which makes both platforms distinct from Instagram or X.