simplified Chinese: 小红书; pinyin: Xiǎo hóng shū

Little Red Book

小红书 is a social media and e-commerce platform. 小红书 was founded in 2013 by Charlwin Mao Wenchao and Mirand Qu Fang. It is often compared to Instagram.

Instagram and 小红书 are similar in many ways, but there are some key differences. 小红书 has the target market towards young women. Data and statistics have shown that about 90% of 小红书’s users are women. Instagram doesn’t have a gender target market. There are difference pages that the apps users can choose to explore. 小红书 allows users the options to explore pages that they follow, discover new pages, or look for nearby products. Instagram users are given the options to explore pages they follow, sponsored advertisements, and a discover section. From that context, they are both very similar. The shopping experience is a little different in that 小红书 allows their users to buy directly on the app, while Instagram redirects users to the brands website to finish their transaction. 小红书 users are mainly from China while Instagram reaches users from all over.

小红书 is more known for being an e-commerce platform rather than a content-sharing platform. It is a lot easier for users to shop within 小红书 because it is all directly within the app. 小红书 is really good at personalizing their pages for their users based on what they enjoy such as restaurant seekers, traveling, shopping, etc. which helps the overall experience for the user more meaningful with the time spent on the app.

小红书 has had a few controversies around overly edited pictures, harmful content toward minors, false reviews, and fraudulent practices. 小红书 has made efforts to combat these issues however with this news, they lost a lot of trust from people. This is a struggle most social media platforms have because the Internet is such a large, scaled thing where it is hard to control what is posted. 小红书 created a team to go through content in efforts to help minimize these issues.

Works Cited

LTL Team HQ. (2021, January 12). Xiaohongshu Vs Instagram 🥊 What is RED and How Can It Compete with Instagram?. Retrieved from Flexi Classes: https://flexiclasses.com/xiaohongshu-vs-instagram/

Lyu, J. (2021, January 8). App Critique: Why 小红书(RED) is so popular in China? Retrieved from Medium: https://jessielyu.medium.com/app-critique-why-%E5%B0%8F%E7%BA%A2%E4%B9%A6-red-is-so-popular-in-china-1e384d450f7e