Talk of a TikTok ban back in January caused a surge in interest, with searches for Chinese social media app RedNote shooting up 99X+ in the space of 3 months.
TikTok briefly "went dark" on Saturday, January 18, but service was resumed within 24 hours. That came amid assurances from Donald Trump.
Since then, the deadline on the TikTok ban has been extended to April 5th.
According to the latest reports, TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, is now on the verge of striking a deal. And at the time of writing, several high-profile bidders have emerged, including Amazon and OnlyFans founder Tim Stokely.
Even so, RedNote has seen greatly elevated global interest, particularly among American users. The Chinese app, known natively as Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book), has over 300 million monthly active users.
Much like TikTok, RedNote allows users to post short-form videos, and it also supports text and image-based posts. It moved to the top of the free download charts in the Apple Store in the US.
Exploding Topics data shows that RedNote searches skyrocketed in the months leading up to the original TikTok ban deadline. In the space of three months, searches increased by 99X+, with monthly search volume in the region of 550,000.
Initially, TikTok was given a deadline to sell or shut down in the US by January 19 amid concerns over links to the Chinese government. The Supreme Court heard arguments against the ban and upheld it — but President Trump has delayed implementation of the law while he works on a “political solution”.
That solution now appears to be drawing nearer as interest in acquiring the platform intensifies.
What Is RedNote?
RedNote is a Chinese social media platform. It's an alternative to TikTok (or Douyin, as the native version is known).
It has been described as a cross between TikTok and Instagram. There have also been comparisons to Pinterest, X, and even Tripadvisor.
Much like TikTok, it has evolved far beyond its original vision. The app was initially named “Hong Kong Shopping Guide” and was designed to serve recommendations to domestic Chinese tourists visiting the region.
Since then, RedNote has become a destination to trade lifestyle tips and short videos. It is particularly popular among young women, with beauty, fashion, food, and travel among the most-discussed topics on the app.
Major tags on posts (translated) include “new mom”, “skin protection party”, “house lover enthusiasts”, and “makeup lover party”. The “makeup sharing” tag has been used in almost 1 billion posts.
Unlike TikTok, RedNote is not split into Chinese and global versions. RedNote and Xiaohongshu are different names for the same app, with one unified user base.
How Many People Use RedNote?
Per the most recent estimate, approximately 300 million people use RedNote. That figure is now likely to be even higher.
The bulk of users are from China. The app has approximately doubled its domestic user base since December 2020.
More than 3 million US users have signed up amid the threat of the ban on TikTok.
“TikTok refugees” has become a trending topic on RedNote. A live chat with that title recently attracted more than 50,000 users from both the US and China.
In April 2025, Semrush traffic data showed that users spent an average of 13 minutes and 20 seconds per visit on RedNote, accessing an average of 4.9 pages.
RedNote users by age
RedNote, much like TikTok, is favored by younger users. Just 8.2% of users are aged 45 or older.
The biggest age group on the app is 18-24. This slice of Gen Z makes up 39.21% of all RedNote users.
RedNote is also popular with millennials. 38.65% of users are aged between 25 and 34, and 13.92% are aged 35-44.
RedNote users by gender
In China, RedNote is heavily favored by women. At one stage, the user base was 90% female.
As of last year, 79.1% of all users were women.
It will be interesting to see how the influx of US users affects this balance. The TikTok user base skews in the other direction, where 54.8% of users are men.
Who Owns RedNote?
Miranda Qu and Charlwin Mao founded RedNote in 2013. Qu is its current president, and Mao is the CEO.
According to Forbes, Qu and Mao each own an estimated 10% of RedNote.
RedNote has numerous external investors. They include Chinese tech giants Alibaba and Tencent.
Questions have been asked about national security in the US. The Chinese government has previously taken “golden shares” in subsidiaries of both Alibaba and Tencent, although neither company is state-owned. Likewise, there is no indication of any state involvement in RedNote.
However, there is no doubt that RedNote has been aimed at a primarily Chinese audience until now. Most of the content is in Mandarin — the language has even seen a noticeable search spike following the influx of US users on the app.
The most recent funding round valued RedNote at $17 billion. Revenue in the first quarter of last year topped $1 billion, representing a profit of more than $200 million.
Social Commerce On RedNote
According to Reuters, the prevalence of aspirational, luxury-focused posts on RedNote has made it fertile ground for social commerce, where users make purchases directly from the app.
(That’s also been a significant trend on TikTok, where over $1 billion of monthly revenue could have been wiped out by a US ban.)
Why Did TikTok Get Banned?
There is more than a hint of irony in the fact that the TikTok ban is pushing users toward RedNote. The US sought the ban in the first place over fears about Chinese involvement.
Indeed, it seems likely that the surge in RedNote interest is at least partly a kind of protest against the ban, with US users deliberately seeking out another Chinese platform.
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, which has consistently denied links to the Chinese government. It has also argued that closing down the app would affect the free speech rights of its US users – a point supported by numerous content creators.
The bill requiring ByteDance to sell by January 19 was signed into law by Joe Biden last April. Congress included the condition as part of wide-ranging legislation that determined foreign aid packages for Ukraine and Israel.
Will TikTok get banned again?
US TikTok users did see service to the app cut off for a matter of hours. It had been speculated that the ban would only initially impact the availability of TikTok on the App Store and Google Play, but ByteDance shut it down entirely.
However, service was restored very quickly, with the app displaying a message that thanked Trump by name. Despite initially supporting a ban, he has indicated his intention to keep TikTok operational in the US.
Talk of a TikTok ban certainly caught the attention of the general public, with 1.4M global searches over the past 12 months, according to Semrush data.
It wasn't entirely clear how the president would block the implementation of a law that was passed by Congress and backed 9-0 by the Supreme Court. But his assurances convinced ByteDance to make the app available in the US again.
Fast-forward to April 2025: ByteDance is on the verge of selling the short-form video platform ahead of the extended deadline.
How Popular Is TikTok In The US?
A potential TikTok ban in the US is highly significant. The social video app has risen to rival Instagram in terms of popularity.
TikTok currently has over 2.1 billion users. The US accounts for more than 400 million monthly visits.
There are 136 million American accounts on TikTok. The gap to Instagram (172m) has widened in recent months, but still equates to more than half of the US adult population — although not every individual account is necessarily a unique user.
And TikTok users are highly engaged when compared to social media users more generally.
Active Instagram users in the US average 11 hours and 55 minutes on the platform per month.
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