The Chinese internet giant’s popular TikTok app may be banned, so ByteDance is promoting a new social networking app in the US. CNBC reported late Monday (April 24) that ByteDance has invited artists to use the Lemon8 platform before it launched formally in the US. Lemon8, a lifestyle app, is a mix of both Instagram and Pinterest.
In Japan, the app was initially released in 2020. The CNBC article on Monday stated that Lemon8 rose 693 spots to become the second-most downloaded lifestyle app in the US in the past 30 days, citing data.ai, a data analytics company. Lemon8 has received 17 million downloads globally since its release.
According to Glenn Gerstell, a senior advisor at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, some of Lemon8’s algorithms are comparable to or identical to TikTok’s recommendation algorithms, making these apps “tremendously popular” because they give users the content they want to see before moving on. Lindsay Gorman, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, meanwhile, said, “You could see this as the competitive move of a company that’s trying to expand into different consumer markets and segments with more image-based and longer-form written content as opposed to only short-form videos.”
Lemon8’s popularity is rising in the US
As TikTok confronts a potential ban in the US due to worries about probable Chinese government influence over the platform, Lemon8’s popularity is rising. The lifestyle app’s connections to ByteDance and TikTok will be monitored by American officials, according to CNBC. (www.plu68.com) Glenn Gerstell mentioned Lemon8’s popularity in Japan and added that even if the US market is closed to the app, “they still have (millions of) people around the world who could be users of this app.” If TikTok were to be outlawed in the US, Lemon8, according to both Gerstell and Lindsay Gorman, might act as a substitute for content producers.
However, creating another app to replace TikTok was not a quick solution for ByteDance, according to analysts. Glenn Gerstell said, “It might give them a fallback in case something gets hurt on TikTok but I don’t see it as generating a solution for ByteDance in this regard.” And Lindsay Gorman said as Lemon8 gained more popularity, it spoke to the need for American regulators to come up with a comprehensive framework to understand “the risks of Chinese internet apps and address them before they spiral out of control.”