Sensor Tower: Xiaohongshu added 700,000 new US users in two days, with a 194% week-on-week increase in downloads

According to Reuters, as TikTok faces the risk of being banned in the United States, many so-called "TikTok refugees" have flocked to Xiaohongshu. According to a person familiar with Xiaohongshu, more than 700,000 new users joined Xiaohongshu in just two days.

According to estimates by app data research firm Sensor Tower, Xiaohongshu's downloads in the United States this week increased by more than 200% year-on-year and 194% compared to the previous week. On Tuesday, the second-most popular free app on the Apple App Store was Bytedance's other social media app Lemon8, which experienced similar growth as Xiaohongshu last month, with downloads surging 190% in December to about 3.4 million times.

The influx of new users seems to have caught Xiaohongshu off guard. Two people familiar with the matter said the company is scrambling to find ways to review English content and develop English-Chinese translation tools. Currently, there is only one version of the Xiaohongshu app, and it is not divided into a local version and an overseas version.

Still, Xiaohongshu is eager to seize the opportunity presented by this sudden wave of attention, as executives see it as a potential path to achieving global popularity similar to TikTok.

So why are TikTok's American users flocking to Xiaohongshu? "Americans use Xiaohongshu as a way of expressing dissatisfaction with the U.S. government's excessive interference in business and privacy issues," said Stella Kittrell, a 29-year-old content creator from Baltimore, Maryland. She said she joined Xiaohongshu in the hope of further cooperation with the Chinese companies that have brought her help.

Some users said they joined Xiaohongshu to find alternatives to U.S. social apps, including Meta's Facebook, Instagram and Musk's X. Some users expressed doubts about whether they could rebuild their TikTok fan base on these U.S. apps. "Instagram, X or any other app is different from TikTok," said Brian Atabansi, a 29-year-old business analyst and content creator from San Diego, California, "mainly because the way to build a community on TikTok is very natural."