By Leon / Edited by cc Sun Congying

Overnight, Xiaohongshu has transformed into "Xiaoyangshu." Since January 14th, a deluge of foreign users has flooded the platform, filling its homepage with English content, catching many Chinese users off guard.

The root of this phenomenon lies in the TikTok ban in the United States. In April 2024, U.S. President Biden signed a bill citing national security concerns, mandating that TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, sell the app to an American company or cease operations in the U.S. by January 19, 2025. (For details, see: Shouzi Zhou Faces an Unprecedented Challenge)

TikTok and ByteDance subsequently sued the U.S. federal government, arguing that the ban was unconstitutional. On December 6, 2024, the federal appeals court ruled the TikTok bill constitutional and upheld the ban. On January 10, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court held a hearing on the ban, TikTok's last chance for a reversal. However, according to U.S. media reports, most justices seemed inclined to uphold the ban. At this point, the TikTok ban in the U.S. officially entered its countdown phase.

With over 170 million monthly active users in the U.S., comprising more than half of the country's population, American users have protested the ban in various ways, but to little avail. As the ban looms, American users appear to have accepted the reality and embarked on a collective search for TikTok alternatives, ultimately settling on Xiaohongshu.

This unexpected surge in traffic swiftly propelled Xiaohongshu to the top of the North American App Store's free chart, surpassing ByteDance's new community app, Lemon8. Xiaohongshu has yet to make any official response and seems content with the situation. The question arises: Can Xiaohongshu handle this massive influx of traffic?

Why Did Xiaohongshu Become the "TikTok Refugee Safe Haven"?

Currently, the hashtag "#tiktokrefugee" on Xiaohongshu has garnered over 230 million views and 5.28 million discussions, with an increasing number of American users joining the platform. Simultaneously, they have begun posting in Chinese using translation software. Some bloggers use simple Chinese phrases like "hello" in their videos, while others share photos of their cats, fostering a generally friendly atmosphere.

Apart from the interface similarity with TikTok, there are three primary reasons why American users prefer Xiaohongshu as an alternative:

Firstly, it's a protest against the U.S. government's ban. "The U.S. government is lying to us. Any app collects and tracks our data. They want to control us by controlling TikTok," expressed a blogger named Sayanna Rose on Xiaohongshu.

Secondly, they hold a stereotypical impression that the Xiaohongshu community exudes a friendly atmosphere. A user named "Jadasd" believes that Xiaohongshu exudes more "positive energy" and inspires people to genuinely take care of themselves. They can post anything here. Some also find Xiaohongshu free from political elements and advertisements, and Chinese users to be very friendly.

Lastly, unlike other platforms, registering on Xiaohongshu does not require a Chinese mobile phone number.

Objectively speaking, most foreign users are essentially "following the crowd." They see their friends and influencers sharing Xiaohongshu on TikTok and decide to join as well. Therefore, not just in the U.S., but also in many other countries like the U.K., France, and Germany, users have started using Xiaohongshu.

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Foreigners Explore Xiaohongshu

Since they are using Xiaohongshu as a TikTok alternative, American users' usage patterns remain similar, primarily focused on sharing photos and videos of their lives. Additionally, they actively interact with Chinese users, such as learning each other's languages. Some American users even assist with English cloze exercises, albeit with questionable accuracy, as ordinary Americans speak English casually without delving into grammar.

Besides posting, some American users have created chat groups on Xiaohongshu, welcoming users of any nationality and language to join. Others have adapted to local customs by "wearing red to celebrate the new year" and sharing intriguing stories from their lives with Chinese users.

Moreover, Xiaohongshu's sudden popularity in the U.S. has attracted celebrities. For instance, NBA star Jalen Williams joined Xiaohongshu and obtained official verification amidst this trend, hoping to gain more followers.

Naturally, the influx of foreign users has also caused some distress to Chinese Xiaohongshu users. The hashtag "#GiveBackMyMom'sXiaohongshu" quickly trended, with some users expressing that Xiaohongshu's homepage is now filled with English content, affecting their user experience, such as the "information cocoon" they have cultivated over time, which refers to content tailored to their interests. Other users have complained that the content posted by foreigners is dull and lacks creativity.

Furthermore, some users have expressed their desire for a translation feature to customer service, to which Xiaohongshu's customer service responded that they would feedback to the relevant department. According to feedback from Chinese users in the U.S., Xiaohongshu has now updated a full English version in the American region.

Overall, although some users feel impacted by the "TikTok refugees," the majority of Chinese users have a relatively positive response. They believe that the current community atmosphere is positive, and users from both China and the U.S. can seize this opportunity to understand each other's real-life situations, fostering a spontaneous cross-cultural exchange among people.

Passive Internationalization and Imperfect Infrastructure Capabilities

Xiaohongshu officially defines itself as a "lifestyle platform and consumption decision-making entry point," positioning it as more than just a life-sharing platform. In addition to embedded advertising posts, Xiaohongshu's official monetization models include opening stores, live streaming, and serving as a buyer on the platform.

If Xiaohongshu aims to truly capture TikTok's traffic and users in the U.S. (including TikTok Shop sellers), it obviously needs to consider the monetization needs of American influencers. Currently, opening a store, live streaming, or becoming a buyer on Xiaohongshu all require Chinese ID verification, even when applying for live streaming permissions outside of mainland China.

Even if Xiaohongshu accepts users with foreign IP addresses from a policy perspective, the subsequent operational risks are also issues that must be considered, necessitating increased investment in content review. From this perspective, adopting a strategy akin to ByteDance's segmented market operations may be inevitable sooner or later.

IT industry commentator Zhang Shule believes that this wave of traffic brings too much uncertainty, arriving swiftly and potentially receding just as quickly. Even if it persists, it will significantly impact Xiaohongshu's ecosystem. Xiaohongshu's content tends to be niche and refined, while TikTok follows a mass appeal route. The two are not entirely aligned, and Xiaohongshu may not necessarily want to retain this wave of traffic.

Then, is there a possibility that Xiaohongshu could seize this opportunity to further internationalize and even expand its e-commerce business overseas? It's certainly an opportunity worth considering.

Commercialization has always been one of the challenges in Xiaohongshu's development. As a unicorn company valued at over $20 billion, its revenue model primarily relies on advertising, followed by e-commerce. However, in recent years, the growth of Xiaohongshu's advertising revenue has hit a bottleneck, and it only achieved profitability for the first time in 2023. The e-commerce business has struggled to scale up and has not become the company's second growth curve.

Therefore, Xiaohongshu launched the "AIPS Audience Asset Model" at the 2024 WILL Business Conference, aiming to more clearly quantify the return on investment. Specifically, it involves collaborating with brands through the seeding alliance, which connects e-commerce platform's third-party data, to quantify the results of "seeding," enabling brands to more clearly see the correlation between seeding and business data growth.

Simultaneously, Xiaohongshu has also adjusted its organizational structure to better meet the needs of e-commerce development. According to insiders, at the beginning of 2025, Xiaohongshu revamped its commercialization structure, including: integrating the commercialization KA (key account) and ecology (SME small and medium-sized enterprises) businesses; renaming the various business groups previously divided by industry to Commercialization Department 1 to 9, and splitting the luxury and fashion service industry group into beauty, luxury, and fashion clothing categories for more detailed operations.

Apart from domestic operations, Xiaohongshu has also been seeking effective ways to go global. For markets such as Japan, Southeast Asia, Europe, and the U.S., Xiaohongshu has launched different apps to pursue segmented development, including Uniik, Spark, Catalog, etc., but all endeavors ended in failure. The influx of American users now provides a vast user base for e-commerce globalization. Of course, Xiaohongshu's current cross-border e-commerce primarily targets domestic users. To expand into the North American market, it still needs to undertake extensive infrastructure construction, such as channel building and investment attraction.

As a side note, domestic cross-border e-commerce platforms also seem eager to capitalize on this wave of traffic and have started promoting themselves on Xiaohongshu, including Alibaba International Station and AliExpress (not verified). Taking AliExpress as an example, it posted content in English on Xiaohongshu welcoming "refugees," seemingly aiming to capture users post-TikTok Shop shutdown.

Additionally, The Wall Street Tech Eye learned from a media company that it is urgently recruiting Xiaohongshu operators to engage in live content planning, including teaching foreign users how to operate Xiaohongshu and teaching Chinese, to see if this wave of traffic can bring benefits. The share prices of Xiaohongshu-related stocks have also continued to rise, including Remote Tech and Densen, which are primarily new media marketing enterprises providing marketing services for e-commerce platforms or brands.