As lawmakers questioned TikTok’s chief executive last week about the app’s relationship with Beijing, with some even calling for a ban, the company’s Chinese owner was sending a message to Americans who regularly make and post on social media. : Join our new app
“ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, invites you to become a launch creator on their new Lemon8 platform before it officially launches in the United States.” said one of the messages sent to creators last week by the marketing companies hired by ByteDance to do the outreach.
The notes and linked materials, which were reviewed by The New York Times, stated Lemon8’s ambition to become a major global social media service and cited the success of its “sister company TikTok.” He added that the platform, which has already been quietly introduced to app stores, used “the same recommendation engine that helps TikTok succeed.” Initially it will focus on topics such as fashion, healthy food and well-being.
The reach is a sign that ByteDance seems unfazed by its ambitions to become one of the world’s top app makers, including in the United States, despite growing calls in Washington to ban TikTok or force Chinese owners to do so. of the company to sell it. TikTok has amassed 150 million users in the US, and ByteDance seems eager to replicate its success with Lemon8.
But lawmakers and regulators may have similar concerns about Lemon8 as they do with TikTok, which has become a central battleground between the United States and China for technological and economic power. Washington officials have said that TikTok poses a national security risk, citing concerns that Beijing could gain access to sensitive data about the app’s users, such as location information, or that China could use TikTok’s content recommendations. to get wrong information.
“It’s a social media platform like Instagram, it’s all about collecting information about users and it has the same ownership structure, being a child of ByteDance, so I think the same issues are going to come up,” Lindsay Gorman said. , director. of technology and geopolitics at the German Marshall Fund and a former technology adviser to the Biden administration.
Even if the app initially seems innocuous, he added, “Ultimately, with social media platforms in particular, they involve content, and eventually, that will always lead to political content and news content.”
Jennifer Banks, a ByteDance spokeswoman, did not respond to questions about Lemon8 and whether the company anticipated any regulatory scrutiny.
Lemon8 is available for download, but has not been formally released. ByteDance is planning a global marketing push to attract more users in May, according to emails to creators. The Insider online news site reported in Entry of Lemon8 to the United States in February.
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Krishna Subramanian, founder of influencer marketing firm Captiv8, described the app as a mix of Pinterest and branded Instagram posts, with a greater focus on images and more text than TikTok. It has two columns of content and is packed with product recommendations and tips, aimed at driving purchases.
Her “ideal creator portrait” is a 22- to 26-year-old woman in the New York or Los Angeles area with a focus on fashion or beauty, according to presentations Lemon8 shared with marketing agencies in January. Lemon8’s vision, one page said, was to “build the most inspiring and informative platform for discovering, sharing and bringing ideas to life.”
Lemon8 also said that it was introduced in Japan in April 2020 and reached five million monthly active users worldwide last year as it expanded to other countries, including Britain, Singapore and Indonesia.
The recruiting effort is a reminder of the gap between how Washington views TikTok and ByteDance, and the perceptions of TikTok’s marketers and often-young users, including creators who make money posting there. TikTok creators are already encouraging viewers to follow them on Lemon8, drawing comments full of lemon emojis. bytedance also owns a popular video editing tool called CapCut, which has become one of the top free apps on the Google and Apple app store lists.
“The fact that it is owned by ByteDance means that the creators will give it a chance,” Subramanian said. “There is a potential for it to become a very, very important part of the culture.”
Crystal Scruggs, a 29-year-old lifestyle creator of Houston, received an email from Obviously, one of the marketing firms working with ByteDance, the day after TikTok CEO Shou Chew gave a roughly five-hour congressional testimony.
The email invited Ms. Scruggs to apply to become a Fashion Launch Creator at Lemon8. If she is chosen, Ms. Scruggs will receive a small, undisclosed stipend for posting on the app. She would have to create 10 posts to be published in April, with topics like reviews and shopping recommendations or fashion tutorials. Each post would include three to 10 images, would require a caption of at least 150 words, and would need approval from Lemon8 before being published.
He said he was struck by the tone of the email, which he said felt different from the brand campaign emails he normally receives. She seemed impersonal, and Ms. Scruggs was initially unsure if this was a legitimate business opportunity.
“When companies or people who work with creators submit information, they typically ask if you’re interested before submitting a full report,” Scruggs said.
In the end, she wasn’t interested. “It seemed like the email was something that was sent to a million different people and not something that was directed at any one person specifically to be part of a campaign,” she added. “I try to stay away from those things.”
The effort has been somewhat of a swarm by design. Hundreds of creators in the United States have already signed up, which will help Lemon8 reach its goal of populating the platform with thousands of pieces of content this spring, according to a person with direct knowledge of the app’s plans who spoke on condition of anonymity. because the plans were not public.
Once Lemon8 selects its initial creators in the United States, they will receive guidance on which themes and aesthetics tend to generate popular content. They will post throughout April in a phase called “content buildup.” In May, the app will focus on adding users and helping creators gain a following. In September, the app will turn its attention to “marketing opportunities,” like helping creators make money from brand and agency deals, and presumably other forms of advertising.
Lemon8 offered creators various incentives to be early partners on the platform beyond their publishing stipends. They could be featured on the “Discover” page of the app or among Lemon8’s “Rising Stars”, and they could even market their content on TikTok.
