A strange phenomenon is sweeping through social media as the last days of TikTok in the US begin to unfold. As most of the 170 million American TikTok users await its ever-encroac

Chinese social apps Xiaohongshu and Lemon8 have soared to the top two spots on Apple's iPhone charts ahead of the U.S.'s impending TikTok ban.

“The ones benefiting from traffic from the TikTok ban are still Chinese apps,” GSR Ventures managing director Allen Zhu wrote on WeChat, posting a screenshot of the US App Store download chart. A stream of new English-language content and users showed up on Xiaohongshu this week, and the #tiktokrefugee hashtag garnered more than 25 million views.

The shares of a group of companies associated with Xiaohongshu continued their upward momentum on Wednesday, buoyed by the Instagram-style Chinese app's ascent to the top of the download charts in the United States.

Xiaohongshu, which in English means “Little Red Book” is a Chinese social media app that combines e-commerce, short video and posting functions. The app is called “RedNote” by American users.

TikTok refugees flocked to Chinese platform Xiaohongshu on Monday, where users greeted them with offers of Mandarin lessons and jokes about spying.

BEIJING (Reuters) -Chinese social media app RedNote has been thrust into the limelight after more than half a million TikTok users recently joined the platform in protest against a likely imminent ban on the short video app in the United States.

Some TikTok users aren't waiting until the upcoming Jan. 19 ban to test out other short-form video sharing apps, but instead of Meta's social media sites or the Fediverse, they're swarming to other Chinese-owned mobile software platforms.

With TikTok's days in the U.S. potentially numbered, many American users are moving to another Chinese social media app: RedNote, a heavily censored platform similar to Instagram. Here's what to know.