Taipei, Taiwan – Alice Guo sparked a flurry of curiosity on Xiaohongshu, the Chinese language social media and e-commerce platform, when she determined at some point in 2021 to share recommendation on getting ready for a job interview.
Chinese language-born Guo was dwelling in Toronto on the time, grounded by the COVID-19 pandemic after years of bouncing between jobs in Vancouver, Hong Kong, New York, Los Angeles and Shanghai.
“I began to do a number of posts and at some point, I simply posted in regards to the interview course of that received me right into a enterprise capital agency,” Guo, who’s in her early 30s, informed Al Jazeera.
“I wakened the subsequent day, simply hastily, it went from possibly like 20 followers to 500 followers in a single day.”
Earlier than lengthy, Guo’s web page, known as “Ali is Working Arduous” in Chinese language, constructed up an viewers of about 45,000 followers, drawn by a mixture of skilled recommendation and updates on her every day life in Canada.
Guo’s web page is among the many numerous accounts on Xiaohongshu which have tapped right into a consumer base primarily made up of younger, highly-educated girls, each in main Chinese language cities and in emigrant communities abroad.
Although missing the worldwide title recognition of Fb, Instagram or X, Xiaohongshu has grow to be the go-to platform for Millennial and Gen-Z Chinese language girls since its launch in 2013 – as only a set of humble PDF paperwork providing journey recommendation.
The platform, which has been described as China’s reply to Instagram, had 200 million month-to-month lively customers in 2022, in accordance with self-reported information, about 70 p.c of whom had been girls.
Whereas Xiaohongshu interprets as “Little Pink Guide” in English – the identical title as Mao Zedong’s well-known textual content – the platform shares little else in frequent with the Chinese language chief’s assortment of speeches and writings.
Fairly than selling revolutionary values, the platform, which mixes weblog posts and quick movies, exemplifies China’s post-Communist consumerist tradition, which is aspirational, bold and globally minded.
And for girls in a society the place political dissent is tightly managed and socially conservative attitudes maintain sway, Xiaohongshu has grow to be one thing of a sanctuary for like-minded friends to freely talk about matters of frequent concern.
Customers share content material on an expansive vary of points, from comparatively uncontentious matters like work life and style, to semi-taboo – albeit not overtly political – matters like divorce, home violence, and perceptions that girls who haven’t gotten married and had youngsters by their early 30s are failures or undesirable.
“These are all stereotypes, however it’s there. It’s actual and it creates nervousness,” Daniela, a Xiaohongshu consumer who requested to be solely referred to by her first title, informed Al Jazeera.
“And, in fact, a variety of actually gifted girls with superb backgrounds are going through actually huge profession challenges,” added Daniela, who posts content material associated to girls’s profession development and empowerment to her greater than 125,000 followers.
Regardless of Beijing’s heavy censorship of the Web, discussions on contentious points are sometimes allowed on Xiaohongshu, particularly in the event that they concentrate on private experiences slightly than higher systemic points in Chinese language society.
Nonetheless, there are pink traces.
One Xiaohongshu consumer, who requested to not be named, informed Al Jazeera that posts she made about her expertise of freezing her eggs had been deleted, although the Chinese language authorities is pushing girls to have extra youngsters.
The platform has additionally cracked down on some shows of conspicuous consumption, warning customers to be extra “empathetic” and never flaunt their wealth as it’s “nonetheless out of attain for a big proportion of individuals”.
Customers have equally been discouraged from over-editing their images and movies.
A part of Xiaohongshu’s attraction is that it embodies a cultured, or “jinzhi,” female aesthetic that requires “not solely cash, but additionally cultural and academic capital” to achieve, setting it other than extra male-dominated platforms like WeChat and Weibo, in accordance with Jia Guo, a professor in gender and cultural research on the College of Sydney.
“Jinzhi has all the time been a giant a part of Xiaohongshu,” Guo informed Al Jazeera. “What’s behind this jinzhi way of life is classed client tradition in post-socialist China and classed distinction of style. Not solely cash, but additionally cultural and academic capital is required to be jinzhi. Such a middle-class city way of life is well-liked on Xiaohongshu and it’s extremely gendered too – typically introduced by younger girls.”
Because it was based greater than a decade in the past, Xiaohongshu has additionally grow to be adroit at understanding its customers, due to its “recreation changer” algorithm, mentioned Sheng Zou, an assistant professor at Hong Kong Baptist College who researches the digital financial system.
Zou mentioned that Xiaohongshu customers typically cite the algorithm as being a part of its attract.
“Most would agree that the algorithm is exact and efficient in detecting and/or predicting their content material preferences or points of their id, extra so than another well-liked apps that they’re utilizing,” Zou informed Al Jazeera.
“You may go actually deep into totally different communities,” James Hsu, a Taiwanese-Canadian primarily based in China who makes use of Xiaohongshu to advertise teaching and consulting providers, informed Al Jazeera, explaining how a “lot of influencers truly arrange group chats you can simply be a part of by going to their profile web page”.
“It feels extra like an precise useful resource than similar to pure leisure, since you might positively go in there to study issues like exhausting abilities, or mushy abilities, like methods to begin a enterprise, like methods to interview for a job, and there are a lot of, many cross-sections with that,” Hsu mentioned.
Revenue issues
Regardless of its loyal and rising following, Xiaohongshu has struggled till just lately to become profitable.
In its early days, Xiaohonghsu had a robust e-commerce element, the place Chinese language customers might supply dependable overseas merchandise – a boon in a rustic rife with faux items and knockoffs.
The platform steadily shifted through the years in the direction of way of life and academic content material, and extra just lately, with the rise of short-form video, livestream purchasing and influencer model offers.
Olivia Plotnick, the founding father of the Shanghai-based advertising company Wai Social, mentioned that Xiaohongshu seems to have discovered its area of interest with such offers.
“They’ve had a variety of issues making an attempt to monetize for the previous a number of years, and I believe they’ve probably discovered a great way to do it with livestreaming just lately,” Plotnick informed Al Jazeera.
These offers don’t come low-cost, as Chinese language influencers can cost between three and 5 extra occasions than their Western counterparts, Plotnick mentioned.
An influencer with 10,000 followers can command $300 to $500 per submit, whereas an influencer with upwards of 300,000 followers can command $5,000, she mentioned.
Plotnick mentioned such partnerships are enticing for manufacturers as Xiaohongshu has all the time been sturdy at elevating model consciousness, even when its e-commerce element lags behind retail giants like Taobao and Tmall.
In the meantime, the platform stands other than rivals due to a livestreaming type that gives a “quiet luxurious” really feel, she mentioned.
The method seems to be paying off.
Xiaohongshu, whose prime buyers embody Alibaba, Tencent and United States-based GGV Capital, made its first revenue final 12 months, taking in $500m on revenues of $3.7bn, the Monetary Instances reported in March, citing folks briefed on the matter.
Xiaohongshu didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Because it seeks to shore up its monetary place, Xiaohongshu has additionally been making an attempt to diversify its consumer base.
Regardless of boasting some 200 million customers, its buyer base continues to be small as compared with platforms reminiscent of Weibo, Douyin and WeChat, which declare between 600 million and 1.2 billion-plus customers.
Xiaohongshu’s drive to develop its consumer base contains outreach efforts to males and people dwelling outdoors of China’s “tier one” and “tier two” cities, reminiscent of Beijing and Shanghai.
Xiaohongshu can also be gaining traction outdoors mainland China, together with in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Western cities with massive Chinese language diaspora populations, reminiscent of Toronto, the place Alice Guo of “Ali is Working Arduous” is predicated.
Guo mentioned one-third of her viewers comes from North America and he or she is an avid client of diaspora-created content material herself.
“It’s like my Yelp, it’s like my Google. So if I wish to discover the place to eat, what to eat, I search for it on Xiaohongshu. Particularly in Toronto, there are tonnes of Chinese language, so virtually each single restaurant has a very good assessment, and I can discover some content material on it,” Guo mentioned.
“If I wish to learn a e-book and understand how good it’s, I’m going to Xiaohongshu for it. After which if I wish to learn about make-up, I’m going to Xiaohongshu.”