Things go out of fashion. We moved from emoticons like 😀 to emojis, which later became obsolete with the advent of GIFs, now there are stickers and blessing stickers that are a part of grandparents. The same thing happens with social networks, and even more so if we consider a market as volatile and dynamic as the Chinese market. Let’s look at today’s social network, TikTok, the social network of young people. The truth is, contrary to what you might think, it is not as much for young people (meaning 18-24 years old) as it seems, and if we talk about the Chinese market, TikTok is not like that anymore. It’s trending (a lot). Xiaohongshu was now taken away.

What? Xiaohongshu, which we can translate as “Little Red Book”, started as an e-commerce platform for imported products. The thing is that over time it has become a social network focused on lifestyle. Instagram, known as China’s Instagram, has 300 million registered users and 200 million monthly active users.

Xiaohongshu “Discover” Section | Image: Xataka.

70% of them are women, and mind you, 72% of all users are from Generation Z, meaning people born between the mid-90s and mid-2010. In the case of TikTok’s Chinese sibling Douyin, the percentage of users aged 18 to 2010 and 35 years old is 57%. The rest of the users are actually older.

watchful eye. It’s true that it still can’t compete with TikTok in raw numbers (Douyin has 752 million monthly active users), but it’s fighting back. So much so that TikTok’s parent company, Bytedance, has launched several Xiaohongshu competitors over the years: Xincao (2018) and Share (2020). The latter, which also focused on other markets, was later renamed Lemon8. If that doesn’t make it obvious that Xiaohongshu is a major competitor, perhaps HongShan’s (formerly known as Sequoia China) purchase of $14 billion worth of Xiaohongshu shares offers another perspective.

What are you doing in Xiaohongshu? Let’s call it a reference platform for finding and receiving recommendations. It is a social network where Influencer Marketing is heavily weighted and things such as plans, trips, restaurants are shared… In fact, a fact repeated in almost all of the documents referenced for this article is; The majority of users, more than half, come from first- and second-tier cities; It’s an unofficial reference to the Chinese government, but it puts the “situation” of its residents, and in this case app users, in quotes. . The trailer above these lines gives us an idea about its target.

TikTok isn’t shaking, but it’s not alone anymore.

So what? More or less the same thing happens. There is still no rival to TikTok among the young population, but the truth is that TikTok’s audience is getting older and this is reflected in the statistics. It is possible that TikTok is perceived as a social network for young people and that young people are between the ages of 18-24, but the situation is different. Only 18.2% of TikTok viewers worldwide are between the ages of 18 and 24. The fact is, as the company’s CEO confirms, that in the US, for example, the average TikTok user is over 30 years old. Almost 40% of users are between 30 and 40 years old.

One thing we didn’t expect to find at Xiaohongshu was a photo of a tripe package | Image: Xataka.

people are getting old. And this is a fact. Time passes for the users of TikTok, which was launched in Spain in 2018 (Feeling old yet?). So, if you started using TikTok when you were 20, I’m sorry to say you’re closer to 30 than 20 now. In 2014, it found that there were more people on TikTok than on Instagram, and that people between the ages of 35 and 49 were more likely to upload videos. Not only that, but the 30-49 age group is the fastest growing group on TikTok.

two factors. On the one hand, late adopters and on the other hand, the inexorable passage of time. We know that time passes, people get older, some of us start writing about technology when we enter university, and our hair is turning gray. This cannot be denied. On the other hand, late adopters, usually older people who entered TikTok in the past and come to represent a large portion of users. This is when the practice began to evolve, not to attract more people, but to preserve what it had.

Screenshots of Xiaohongshu app | Image: Google Play Store

In the United States, Instagram has more users aged 25-34 than the 18-24 age group, with a significant number (19.5%) aged 35-44. It’s no coincidence that Instagram copied Snapchat stories or implemented reels. These are not features aimed at attracting more users, but rather features aimed at retaining users who already use the platform. For this reason, TikTok is, in a way, heading towards new horizons with long videos, e-commerce or horizontal clips.

We say Facebook is for old people… Since we’re talking data, it wouldn’t hurt to debunk one of the big myths about social networking: Facebook isn’t for old people. Everyone has their own definition of “old”, but the truth is: 29.9% of Facebook users are between the ages of 25 and 34. It is the most popular group. The second group consists of people aged 18-24 with 21.5%, and the third group consists of people between the ages of 35-44 with 19.4%.

Pictures | Xiaohongshu, his own catches

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