The days of TikTok in the United States may soon be over. The app is expected to be banned on Sunday unless a U.S. buyer or the Supreme Court intervenes.
In the meantime, there’s another app owned by TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, that’s making waves. Lemon8 is currently the most downloaded lifestyle app in Apple App Store and has more than 10 million downloads worldwide Google Play Store.
“Lemon8 is a lifestyle community-focused app powered by TikTok, where you can discover and share authentic content on a variety of topics like beauty, fashion, travel, food, and more.”, says the app description in both stores.
Here’s what you need to know about Lemon8.
Note: I contacted ByteDance for this story and the company did not respond for comment.
What is Lemon8?
Lemon8 posts may contain text to help label objects in the post.
Lemon8 is a video and photo sharing platform that eschews the vertical scrolling format of TikTok in favor of a Pinterest board-style format. But what Lemon8 and TikTok have in common is that they both have Follow and For You tabs to show you posts from creators you follow and posts the app thinks you’ll like.
Lemon8 content is divided into six thematic tabs, plus a seventh tab called All. The other tabs are Fashion, Beauty, Food, Well-being, Journey And Home. These tabs are at the top of your screen, and tapping these tabs displays recommended and suggested posts.
Posts can be collections of swipeable photos like on Instagram or TikTok-style videos. Some creators add text to their photos to label a garment or product. Some will also include the price of the item in the text.
How is Lemon8 different from TikTok and other apps?
Lemon8 is different from other apps in terms of what is published and how it is presented.
Lemon8 has a lot of influencer advertising and product recommendations. It’s hard to tell what is or isn’t sponsored content, and this seems to be the norm across the app. TikTok also offers sponsored content, but these are usually marked as such in the lower left corner.
Memes don’t seem to be gaining momentum in Lemon8.
There also aren’t many memes or jokes on Lemon8 compared to other apps. You can find memes on Lemon8, but various hashtags associated with “memes”, like “funnymemes” and “catmemes”, have less than a million views (compared to hundreds of millions on Instagram). This could be because Lemon8 continues to gain traction in the US, but I suspect Lemon8 isn’t meant for memes. Rather, it is a guide to help you achieve a certain lifestyle or aesthetic.
There’s also a lot of writing in Lemon8. For example, post captions might include instructions for a recipe or a more detailed description of an outfit. TikTok captions may contain useful information, but these captions are more about connecting posts to hashtags to get more views and don’t necessarily add new information to the TikTok post. Lemon8 uses captions in the same way as Instagram posts, but Lemon8 captions have one key difference from Instagram: templates.
Lemon8 templates can help you quickly create captions or give you an idea of what to include in captions.
Lemon8 lets you use templates for your posts to help you format quickly and give you an idea of your post’s subtitle. There are legend designs for fashion, shopping finds, beauty, food and travel.
Lemon8 reminds me of a mashup between magazines Martha Stewart alive, Bodybuilding and fitness And Travel + Leisure. You can find helpful tips in Lemon8 to help you achieve your desired aesthetic or find holiday inspiration, but it’s not clear what is or isn’t an advertisement.
What are people saying about Lemon8?
So far, people’s reaction to Lemon8 seems positive. A TikTok creator posted a video calling Lemon8 “Pinterest, but interactive”. Another said Lemon8 is a combination of Pinterest, Instagram and TikTok.
However, this positivity could be artificially inflated. ZDNet reports that numerous TikTok posts about Lemon8 have described the app with similar language, leading some to believe that ByteDance paid these creators.
And the claims of some Lemon8 creators make this theory more viable. A Lemon8 creator said Insider that ByteDance paid them to post on the app. Two other Lemon8 creators showed insider emails describing the app’s payment structure.
Should you download Lemon8?
Lemon8 is free, so even if you’re a little curious, you can download and try the app. Just be aware that the app’s posts are more like educational guides than shareable memes, and many posts look like advertisements.
Who owns Lemon8?
ByteDance, the Chinese technology company that owns TikTok, also owns Lemon8. According to ZDNetByteDance is positioning Lemon8 as a rival to Instagram as more users stop using or abandon the Meta app.
According to the Wall Street Journalan internal memo leaked by Meta showed engagement on Instagram was down. ByteDance executives could hope to capitalize on this by offering Instagram users an alternative app in the form of Lemon8. And even though Lemon8 launched globally in 2020, the app’s recent growth could show that ByteDance’s gamble is paying off.
What is Lemon8’s privacy policy?
Lemon8’s travel tab can inspire you for your next getaway.
Most Lemon8 Privacy Policy seems standard for social media apps. It states that Lemon8 collects personal and location information to provide you with a better app experience. Some information collected includes your IP address and browsing history. But one part of the app’s privacy policy might raise eyebrows.
“The personal information we collect from you may be stored on a server located outside of the country in which you live,” the policy states. The company has servers around the world, as per policy, so your information may be stored on any of them.
This is different from how Lemon8’s sister app TikTok stores some users’ data. The company stores US-based user data on Oracle servers. TikTok CEO Shou Chew said ByteDance employees in China can access this data, but with “robust cybersecurity controls and authorization approval” overseen by a U.S.-based security team.
To learn more about social media, find out how you can use social media for good and how social media apps like Bereal and Mastodon could be the next big thing.
