More U.S. users of TikTok are turning to Duolingo to learn Chinese, as the company adopts a Chinese social app called RedNote ahead of TikTok's ban. Unless blocked by the Supreme Court, the US law is set to take effect on January 19th, TikTok will be removed from US app stores and the app will no longer function on users' devices unless they install a VPN client. Masu.
But instead of trying to circumvent the ban, more than 700 million TikTok users migrated to the social video platform RedNote (also known as Xiaohongshu), facilitating an amazing cultural exchange between the two countries' citizens. An American user helps a Chinese user with his English homework.
Some TikTok refugees have since struggled with technical issues signing up for RedNote, and some have been quickly fired for community violations, but their intentions to migrate from one Chinese-owned app to another is intended to send a strong signal to the U.S. government and its administration. Potential TikTok competitors like Meta argue that the social networking experience China produces is in demand and that U.S. companies can only imitate it.
The move also serves as a benchmark for determining whether U.S. users are concerned that Chinese companies are collecting their personal data for malicious purposes. This is one of the key factors that led to TikTok's ban in the first place. (Actually, as this migration shows, that's often not the case.)
However, Shanghai-based Xiaohongshu/RedNote is designed for Chinese people, so the default language of the app is Chinese. This has led to an increase in American users of the language learning app Duolingo taking crash courses in Chinese.
According to Duolingo, new Chinese learning in the U.S. through the app is up about 216% compared to this time last year, with a sharp increase in mid-January when RedNote adoption began. Additionally, the company is reporting a corresponding spike in people selecting “TikTok” as an answer to its “How did you hear about us” survey that new users are asked to answer. .
“Oh, so you're learning Chinese right now,” the company joked in an X post on Tuesday. He also posted a video on TikTok promoting the use of the app for learning Chinese. The short video showed the company's green owl mascot at an airport heading to China overlaid with text that read, “I want to move to China and learn Chinese on Duolingo.” The video currently has over 500,000 likes. Another recent video focused on teaching “TikTok refugees” Mandarin phrases has more than 620,000 likes.
Consumer demand for Duolingo's language learning courses is also impacting the app's installed base, according to data from app intelligence provider Appfigures.
The company reported that Duolingo's app saw a 36% increase in downloads in the U.S. from the App Store and Google Play combined as of January 3. This is an early sign that users may have been experimenting with a variety of Chinese social apps before RedNote participation spiked later in the month. .
A week ago, Duolingo was ranked #40 in Top Apps (excluding games) and Top Overall (including games). It currently ranks 22nd overall and 20th in top apps.