China's Social Media App Tops US App Store Ranking Amid TikTok Prohibition Potential

JAKARTA - TikTok faces the risk of bans in the United States in the coming days after President Joe Biden signed a law requiring ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, to relinquish its holdings over the app.

Amid rising uncertainty, users are now looking for a new alternative, and one of the applications from China, RedNote, has suddenly become the most popular app on the US App Store.

RedNote, known as Xiaohongshu in China, is a social media platform launched in 2013. Originally designed to compete with Pinterest and Instagram, the app focuses on integrated product and e-commerce reviews. Later, RedNote has also started to add short video features like TikTok.

According to a TechCrunch report, RedNote has become very popular among young users in China, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. With more than 300 million monthly active users, the app was previously not very well known in other countries. However, the situation changed drastically when RedNote suddenly became the most downloaded app on the US App Store, outperforming apps like ChatGPT, Threads, Instagram, and TikTok.

The surge in RedNote popularity was largely driven by the alternative search for TikTok. Many content creators promote this app to their followers as a new place to share and interact. Although TikTok's ban is uncertain, creators don't want to lose their followers and are trying to find a backup platform.

Interestingly, even though there are US-made application options such as Instagram, users instead choose other applications from China. This is happening amid allegations by the US Department of Justice that ByteDance shares TikTok user data with the Chinese government and manipulates content for political purposes.

Although US President-elect Donald Trump has stated that he may stop TikTok's ban plans, uncertainty remains looming. Whether RedNote will be able to fill the void TikTok may leave in the US market, or it will only be a temporary trend, is still a big question.

What is clear is that the rise of RedNote shows how much users need for social media platforms to express and interact in the digital era.