Listening to so much about Lemon8 these days? You’re not the one one.
Amid a looming U.S. ban on TikTok, content material creators have been pushing the platform’s sister app. Lemon8 resembles an amalgamation of the types of short-form videos discovered on TikTok and the picture-perfect aesthetic of Instagram and Pinterest.
Like its fashionable relation, Lemon8 is owned by China-based ByteDance, whose assortment of internationally obtainable apps additionally consists of the video modifying app CapCut and the photograph and artwork modifying 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 U.S. in 2023, just a few 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 much as TikTok, which has greater than 170 million U.S. customers.
However extra individuals have downloaded the app up to now month, making it one of many top-ranking free apps on Apple’s app retailer. Lemon8’s reputation may probably soar additional relying on the result of a U.S. Supreme Court hearing Friday over a regulation requiring TikTok to interrupt ties with ByteDance or face a U.S. ban.
TikTok says it plans to close down the platform within the U.S. by Jan. 19 if the federal government prevails, because it did in a lower court.
What are creators saying about Lemon8?
Influencers beforehand partnered with Lemon8 to advertise the lesser-known app on TikTok. In latest weeks, a lot of them have hailed Lemon8 because the place to go if TikTok is banned below federal regulation. Some have additionally been recommending it via paid sponsored posts tagged #lemon8partner, exhibiting a latest company push to generate extra customers.
However there’s a hitch. The regulation, which might wipe out TikTok’s U.S. operation if it’s not offered 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. Meaning despite the fact that Lemon8 and CapCut aren’t explicitly named within the statute, their futures within the U.S. 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 determine them.
The latest Lemon8 adverts on TikTok additionally could also be an indication that ByteDance is “hoping or betting” Lemon8 slips via 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 “attain and engagement potential.”
Like TikTok, Lemon8’s foremost feed options each a “following” part that lets customers have a look at content material from the creators they comply with 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 U.S. customers on Lemon8, which is believed to be miniscule in comparison with its trend-setting sister app. Information from the analysis agency SimilarWeb signifies Lemon8 has a bit over 1 million day by day lively customers within the U.S. In line with the market intelligence firm Sensor Tower, the app had 12.5 million world month-to-month lively customers as of Dec. 24.
Sensor Tower estimates the app noticed a big bounce in world downloads in December — a 150% improve — in comparison with a mean 2% month-over-month decline final yr. The U.S. accounted for 70% of the month’s downloads.
The most important variety of U.S. downloads have been carried out on Dec. 19, in response to Sensor Tower. That was the day after the Supreme Court said it could hear this week’s oral arguments over the constitutionality of the federal regulation that would ban TikTok.
The regulation passed with bipartisan support final yr after lawmakers and Biden administration officers expressed considerations that Chinese language authorities may pressure ByteDance at hand over U.S. user data or sway public opinion in the direction of Beijing’s pursuits by manipulating the algorithm that populates customers’ feeds.
President-elect Donald Trump requested the Supreme Courtroom on Dec. 27 to pause the potential TikTok ban from going into impact till he’s inaugurated and his administration can pursue a “political decision” to the difficulty.
—Haleluya Hadero, AP enterprise author