In English, it seems to be called rednote. But I doubt that it will be a real successor. At the moment it's a funny meme, and for some people satisfied cultural curiosity. But we already see the problems appearing, from the poorly localized interface, to people getting banned for reasons outside their understanding.
My guess is, at the end we will see maybe some million users from the USA and some more millions from around the world moving to this app, and maybe bringing a new interaction between the countries, but the majority will end up somewhere else.
Well technically I am in high school
and Neither have you used ever instagram (okay maybe for that one time , I wanted to propose to my crush , (turns out she didn't have insta , so I had to talk to her friend asking her on my behalf where they said no [aww man])
and I live in India , so tiktok's banned. There are many indian alternatives to tiktok's that I have seen , But rednote being chinese just makes me wonder if its gonna survive.
Y'know things are just different yet so the same. The same fomo happened during the facebook time is now happening with red note.
“History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes,” as Mark Twain is often reputed to have said. (I’ve found no compelling evidence that he ever uttered that nifty aphorism. No matter — the line is too good to resist.) (source https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/12/history-rhymes/)
Wait, you proposed to your crush? Proposed as in marriage proposal and crush as in romantic feelings for someone seemingly unattainable? You also asked her friend to ask for you via Instagram?
I know we come from very different cultures and I have no intention of judging you, but can you perhaps give me a clue as to how this would work? I'm intrigued, to say the least.
I'm from India too (but at-least a generation older than this kid) and to clarify:
proposed = asking for a date or if he's too forward / self-centered then asking her to "be my girlfriend"
crush = a girl I like but haven't told that to her or shown it in public
And yes for kids in school it's quite common to initiate conversations through mutual friends because otherwise gossip spreads too quick and can sometimes be damaging (both emotionally and socially).
That's surprising to me. I'm 23 and Reels is, as far as I was aware, a big complimentary app to TikTok in my generation. To frame it as a Reel I saw;
"TikTok is vape and Reels are cigarettes".
TikTok's algorithm is _super_ curated and targeted, like a Mr. Beast video. Instagram's is pretty good but if you can get your algorithm to the brainrot cluster with everyone else then you'll get a lot of out-of-left-field, grungier content you might not find on TikTok.
I think once RedNote gets banned or the meme fades people will mainly flock to IG. There's still a void of creator based features that IG can't fill, so maybe a competitor will pop up if IG can't replicate the environment well enough.
Counterpoint here, I'm 32 and would have to disagree on the complimentary piece.
In my group of friends, the reels/shorts crowd have eased off on keeping up with the latest fads/memes. Its similar to the old meme cycle of them starting on 4chan and some filtering down to Digg/Reddit, you end up with them being watered down or receive them extremely late in the fad cycle.
Reels have a few problems, the biggest one is randomly getting served gore/death videos. This has never happened to me on tiktok. I feel like (cant substantiate this) reels pushes sex/thirst content more than tiktok does. The final one is the actual social aspect of tiktok vs reels, the comments and interactions on reels are very abusive and spammy compared to tiktok.
I do agree with you about RedNote being a fad, its artificially inflated but its possible the astroturfing of "interaction" will lead to a sustainable level of organic/real interaction with the app. IG is not great for communities.
He's likely to have more disposable incomr and go through a crisis of some sort that many people fill with buying, whilst also deluding themselves they're still in their 20s. I think mid 30s is a pretty hot market for advertisers.
I really hope people will unflock from most social media, at last for now that it is really at its worst. Perhaps in time, after building some open source social media platforms that does not have these big corporations in charge, things will change for the better.
Pretty much Insta/X is for genx and millennials, Facebook is for the boomer gen. Tiktok was for zoomers, when i was a teen till like 23 i hated being on the same cringe ass social media platform as my mom. Another teen trait is rebellion.
I know someone who speaks Chinese and uses that app. The name in Chinese Xiaohongshu clearly translates to "Little Red Book," and they're confused how anyone got "Red Note" out of it.
> My guess is, at the end we will see maybe some million users from the USA and some more millions from around the world moving to this app, and maybe bringing a new interaction between the countries, but the majority will end up somewhere else.
If that happens, Little Red Book will trigger exactly the same law that's banning TikTok.
> and they're confused how anyone got "Red Note" out of it
"Little Red Book" is the literal translation of the original name but that's not the only way companies approach global markets, especially with longer to say names. It looks like they sometimes use "REDNote" (as it appears in App Stores), "RedNote", and sometimes just "RED" depending on the context (e.g. their advertisement/promotional email address is red.ad@xiaohongshu.com).
As to how they got there with it? "Little Red Book" is just an awkward mouthful to refer to compared to the alternative forms they used.
You're being facetious. The name Xiaohongshu is clearly a reference to Mao's book. And it's incorrectly translated as "Red Note" specifically to avoid the reference, not because it's a "mouthful".
If there was a German app called "My Strawberry" and you found out that the original German name translates to "My Struggle" you'd be very curious as to why the English name is so different and what they're trying to hide.
I'm not sure where the humor or joke was supposed to be nor where I claimed the original name lacked said association. Similarly, I don't particularly see "RedNote" as a well aimed choice for a rebrand set about for the purpose of distancing the app from communist associations.
TikTok doesn't use their literal translation either. Not because the name had a certain association but because it'd've also been a terrible way to market the app globally. I could give some credit to the idea there may have been more than a singular reason for changing the name but I can't buy the reason other apps also do is not at least a major factor, if not the largest.
One could argue, and I think with a strong case that if this law applies to TikTok, it would also apply to Twitter (Saudi investment) and Snapchat (also Saudi investment).
As written there are several problems with your theory:
A) The bill is about transfer of user information, not investment in a company.
B) Saudi Arabia owns a small, non controlling interest in Twitter/x
C) Saudi Arabia is not on the list of foreign adversary countries
So you’d have a hard time making that ‘strong’ argument.
We are trying to get away from Saudi influence and control so much that we look the other way while we pump poison into our water. So much so that the Simpson's even have an episode devoted to it where Marge exclaims, "the water is on fire!"
> I know someone who speaks Chinese and uses that app. The name in Chinese Xiaohongshu clearly translates to "Little Red Book," and they're confused how anyone got "Red Note" out of it.
I'll tell you a funny one like that in another language:
Instagram reels are well... short-form videos usually with music/audio and effects.
It's pronounced something like "real" but longer.
Anyway, in French that word "reel" is printed the same but since most people don't practice spoken English it's read and pronounced "réel". Something like ray-hell (notice the é). And it annoys me to no eeeend :D.
So, among French-speaking community management crews and social network teams you hear "réel"/ray-hell all the time instead of "reel".
And how do you translate "réel" into English ? You guessed it: it's "real".
Yeah but "little red book" (xiaohongshu) in mandarin is not actually how the original Mao Little Red Book is called in Mandarin, either formally or informally. Informally in mandarin it's called hongbaoshu (literally "red cover book" and formally, as you can imagine, is like Quotes from Chairman Mao).
So this is a case of translators with an agenda translating two phrases with different original mandarin renditions (hongbaoshu and xiaohongshu), and picking and choosing the style of translation (base on usage vs based on character) to get the English translation to merge both of them as "Little Red Book".
Not really. Mao's book has been known as the "Little Red Book" in English for decades, well before the app existed.
And the characters for "小红书" directly and literally translate to "little", "red", and "book". It's the most literal and obvious translation of the name, no agenda needed. Go ask any Chinese person.
The app didn't even have an English name until recently. It was just "小红书" which any Chinese person would render in English as "Little Red Book". "RedNote" is a recent branding exercise.
> If that happens, Little Red Book will trigger exactly the same law that's banning TikTok.
We will see, but I would think if they gain 2-5 Million Users, it wouldn't but of much concern for the feds. Unless they gain access to a specific vulnerable group.
> We will see, but I would think if they gain 2-5 Million Users, it wouldn't but of much concern for the feds. Unless they gain access to a specific vulnerable group.
The way the law is written, any adversary-controlled social network with more than 1 million MAU could be affected.
I think they'd ban it if it started gaining traction outside of Chinese immigrant communities. And it'd make sense to do it early, now that they have the legal power to do so, since it'd avoid controversy. No one would have cared about the TikTok ban if they did it when it was at 1-2 million MAU.
My guess is, at the end we will see maybe some million users from the USA and some more millions from around the world moving to this app, and maybe bringing a new interaction between the countries, but the majority will end up somewhere else.