TikTok, a short video social media outlet in China, has been banned in the U.S. for 14 hours and new U.S. users have chosen Chinese-made social media as their refuge.
On the 20th (local time), the most downloaded app by users on Apple’s App Store was counted as Xiao Hongshu (Red Note). About 700,000 people newly installed Xiao Hongshu in the U.S. This is the aftermath of the U.S. Congress’s removal of TikTok from the U.S. market on the 18th.
The U.S. Congress passed a ban on TikTok in the U.S. in April last year, citing national security and other reasons. If TikTok’s parent company ByteDance does not sell its U.S. business rights, it will be removed from the market. TikTok service was suspended on the evening of the 18th. President Trump suspended the ban for up to 75 days, and TikTok resumed its service.
Xiao Hongshu, a new short-form social networking site where TikTok is banned, has uploaded 5.5 million posts with the hashtag #TikTokrefugees. It has 250 million views. Founded in China in 2013, Xiao Hongshu is a social networking site that mainly specializes in travel, fashion, and makeup. Out of 300 million users, 72 percent are from the MZ generation.
The reason why Xiao Hongshu enjoyed reflective profits in the TikTok crisis is its compatibility. The company has built a system that allows users to directly move TikTok posts and post them on Xiao Hongshu. Its user interface and user experience (UI/UX) are similar to TikTok. Using this as a strength, it has absorbed SNS users who left TikTok.
Meta tried to increase its market share by taking advantage of TikTok’s ban. On the 20th, Instagram’s short-form function, Reels, was increased to three minutes. The shape of the user feed was also changed from square to rectangle with a ratio of 3:4 width and length. The purpose is to match the ratio of smartphones and the screen of SNS posts. Industry experts say that Instagram benchmarks TikTok. Since 2021, TikTok has been increasing short-form playback time and maintaining a rectangular screen.
Despite the change, SNS users turned a blind eye to Meta. This explains that SNS users find Meta to be outdated due to the aging brand image of Instagram, Facebook, and X that has been maintained for more than a decade. TechCrunch, an IT media outlet in the U.S., said, “Meta and X are known as clichéd SNS by teenage users,” adding, “They left for Xiaohongshu rather than going back to Instagram instead of TikTok.”
JENNIFER KIM
US AASIA JOURNAL
