Is Lemon8 a good alternative to TikTok? Here’s what you need to know

TikTok days in the United States It may end soon. The app is scheduled to be banned on Sunday, unless American buyer or supreme court He intervenes.

Meanwhile, there’s another app owned by ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, that’s making waves. Lemon8 It is currently the most downloaded lifestyle app Apple App Store It has more than 10 million downloads Google Play Store.

“Lemon8 is a lifestyle community focused app powered by TikTok, where you can discover and share original content on a variety of topics like beauty, fashion, travel, food, and more,” reads the app description on both stores.

Here’s what you need to know about Lemon8.

Note: We reached out to ByteDance for this story, and the company did not respond for comment.

What is Lemon 8?

Lemon8 is a video and photo sharing platform that eschews TikTok’s vertical scrolling format in favor of a Pinterest board-style format. But what Lemon8 and TikTok have in common is that they both have “Following” and “For You” tabs to show you posts from creators you follow and posts the app thinks you’ll like.

Lemon8’s content is divided into six themed tabs, plus a seventh tab called everyone. The other tabs are fashion, beauty, food, health, He travels and house. These tabs can be found at the top of your screen, and clicking on these tabs will bring up recommended and suggested posts.

Posts can be swipeable collections of images like in videos on Instagram or TikTok. Some creators add text to their photos to label the clothing or product. Some will also include the price of the item in the text.

How is Lemon8 different from TikTok and other apps?

Lemon8 differs from other apps in terms of what is published and how it is presented.

Lemon8 has lots of impactful ads and product recommendations. It’s difficult to know what is sponsored content and what is not, and this seems to be the norm for the app. TikTok also has sponsored content, but it’s usually marked as such in the bottom left corner.

There aren’t a lot of memes or jokes on Lemon8 compared to other apps either. You can find memes on Lemon8, but various hashtags associated with “memes,” such as “funnymemes” and “catmemes,” have less than a million views (versus hundreds of millions on Instagram). This may be because Lemon8 is still very popular in the US, but I suspect Lemon8 isn’t made for memes. It’s meant to serve as a guideline 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 deeper breakdown of an outfit. TikTok captions can contain useful information, but these captions are more about linking posts with hashtags to get more views and don’t necessarily add new information to a TikTok post. Lemon8 uses captions in a similar way to Instagram posts, but Lemon8 captions have one key difference from Instagram: templates.

Lemon8 lets you use templates for your posts to help you format quickly and to give you an idea of ​​what you should add to your post. There are illustration templates for fashion, shopping finds, beauty, food, and travel.

Lemon8 reminds me of a magazine mix Martha Stewart Living, Muscle and fitness and Travel + entertainment. You can find some useful tips at Lemon8 to help you achieve your desired aesthetic look or find some inspiration while on vacation, but it’s not clear what is and isn’t an ad.

What do people say about Lemon8?

People’s reaction to Lemon8 seems positive so far. One of the creators of TikTok I posted a video Call Lemon8 “Pinterest, but interactive.” last Lemon8 said It’s a combination of Pinterest, Instagram, and TikTok.

However, this positivity can be artificially inflated. ZDNet reports that several TikTok posts about Lemon8 have described the app in similar language, leading some to believe ByteDance paid these creators.

And some of the claims of Lemon8’s creators make this theory seem more plausible. said one of the Lemon8 creators From the inside For which ByteDance paid them to publish on the app. Two other Lemon8 creators showed emails from Insider outlining the app’s payment structure.

Should you download Lemon8?

Lemon8 is free, so even if you’re a little curious, you can download the app and try it out. All you need to do is know that the app’s posts are more like educational guides than sharing memes, and that many of the posts resemble ads.

Who owns Lemon8?

ByteDancethe Chinese technology company that owns TikTok, also owns Lemon8. according to ZnetByteDance is positioning Lemon8 to be an Instagram competitor as more users stop or abandon using the Meta app.

According to Wall Street Journala leaked internal memo from Meta showed that engagement on Instagram is declining. ByteDance executives could hope to capitalize on this by giving Instagram users an alternative app in the form of Lemon8. While Lemon8 was released globally in 2020, the app’s recent growth may show ByteDance’s gamble is paying off.

What is Lemon8’s privacy policy?

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 of the information collected includes your IP address and browsing history. But part of the app’s privacy policy may raise eyebrows.

“Personal information we collect from you may be stored on a server located outside the country where you live,” the policy states. The company has servers around the world, according to policy, so your information can be stored in any of them.

This is different from the way TikTok, Lemon8’s sister app, stores some user data. Company stores User data located in the United States on Oracle servers. ByteDance employees in China have access to this data, but through “strong cybersecurity controls and license approval” overseen by a US-based security team, TikTok CEO Xu Qiu said.

For more on social media, see How you can use social media for good and How social media apps like Bereal and Mastodon could be the next big thing.