Listening to loads about Lemon8 currently? You’re not the one one.
Amid a looming US ban on TikTok, content material creators have been pushing the platform’s sister app.
Lemon8 resembles an amalgamation of the forms of short-form movies discovered on TikTok and the picture-perfect aesthetic of Instagram and Pinterest.
Like its well-liked relation, Lemon8 is owned by China-based ByteDance, whose assortment of internationally obtainable apps additionally consists of the video enhancing app CapCut and the picture and artwork enhancing app Hypic.
As well as, the corporate operates Douyin, the Chinese language sibling of TikTok that follows Beijing’s strict censorship guidelines.
Lemon8 launched within the US in 2023, a couple of years after it first popped up in Asian markets.
Although it garnered some media and person curiosity in its early days, the app hasn’t taken off as a lot as TikTok, which has greater than 170 million US customers.
However extra folks have downloaded the app prior to now month, making it one of many top-ranking free apps on Apple’s app retailer. Lemon8’s reputation might doubtlessly soar additional relying on the end result of a Supreme Court docket listening to Friday over a regulation requiring TikTok to interrupt ties with ByteDance or face a US ban.
TikTok says it plans to close down the platform within the US by Jan. 19 if the federal government prevails, because it did in a decrease courtroom.
What are creators saying about Lemon8?
Influencers beforehand partnered with Lemon8 to advertise the lesser-known app on TikTok. In current weeks, a lot of them have hailed Lemon8 because the place to go if TikTok is banned beneath federal regulation. Some have additionally been recommending it by paid sponsored posts tagged #lemon8partner, exhibiting a current company push to generate extra customers.
However there’s a hitch. The regulation, which might wipe out TikTok’s US operation if it’s not bought to an permitted purchaser, states the divest-or-ban requirement applies usually to apps which are owned or operated by ByteDance, TikTok or any of their subsidiaries. Which means despite the fact that Lemon8 and CapCut should not explicitly named within the statute, their futures within the US are also in jeopardy.
Jasmine Enberg, an analyst at market analysis firm Emarketer, famous that the creators recommending Lemon8 is probably not conscious of the doable implications for the opposite ByteDance apps as a result of the regulation doesn’t establish them.
The current Lemon8 advertisements on TikTok additionally could also be an indication that ByteDance is “hoping or betting” Lemon8 slips by the cracks as lawmakers and regulators focus their consideration on TikTok, Enberg stated. Representatives for the businesses didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
Lemon8 downloads
To spice up Lemon8’s person base, TikTok introduced in November that creators would be capable of entry a Lemon8 account with the identical account they use on TikTok, a characteristic the corporate says will improve their capacity to cross-post content material. TikTok stated the mixing was designed to broaden creators “reach and engagement potential.”
Like TikTok, Lemon8’s principal feed options each a “following” part that lets customers have a look at content material from the creators they observe and a “For You” part that recommends different posts. The newer platform additionally kinds posts into completely different classes, like relationships, wellness and skincare.
ByteDance has not disclosed the variety of world or US customers on Lemon8, which is believed to be miniscule in comparison with its trend-setting sister app.
Knowledge from the analysis agency SimilarWeb signifies Lemon8 has slightly over 1 million every day energetic customers within the US In accordance with the market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, the app had 12.5 million world month-to-month energetic customers as of Dec. 24.
Sensor Tower estimates the app noticed a big bounce in world downloads in December — a 150% enhance — in comparison with a mean 2% month-over-month decline final yr. The US accounted for 70% of the month’s downloads.
The most important variety of US downloads had been carried out on Dec. 19, in keeping with Sensor Tower. That was the day after the Supreme Court docket stated it will hear this week’s oral arguments over the constitutionality of the federal regulation that would ban TikTok.
The regulation handed with bipartisan help final yr after lawmakers and Biden administration officers expressed considerations that Chinese language authorities might power ByteDance at hand over US person information or sway public opinion in direction of Beijing’s pursuits by manipulating the algorithm that populates customers’ feeds.
President-elect Donald Trump requested the Supreme Court docket on Dec. 27 to pause the potential TikTok ban from going into impact till he’s inaugurated and his administration can pursue a “political resolution” to the problem.
