TikTok users in the US are learning Chinese on Duolingo in increasing numbers amid their adoption of the Chinese social app It’s called Red Note Before TikTok was banned. The American law is scheduled to enter into force on January 19. Unless you stop The Supreme Court will see TikTok removed from US app stores and will stop the app from working on users’ devices unless… Install a VPN client.
But instead of trying to get around the ban, Over 700 million TikTok users It turned to the social video platform RedNote (also known as Xiaohongshu), which led to a surprising cultural exchange between citizens of the two countries — not to mention a few requests for American users for help with Chinese users’ English homework.
Although some TikTok refugees have since done so He encountered technical problems When they signed up for RedNote, and others were promptly kicked out for community violations, the goal of moving from one Chinese-owned app to another is to send a strong signal to the US government and potential TikTok competitors like Meta that there is demand for the kind of social networking experiences China has created that companies haven’t been able to America is only imitating it.
The move also serves as a pulse check on whether or not American users are concerned about Chinese companies collecting their personal data for nefarious use — one of the key factors that led to TikTok being banned in the first place. (As it turns out, many are not, as this migration shows.)
However, since the Shanghai-based Xiaohongshu/RedNote app is designed for Chinese audiences, the default language of the app is Mandarin Chinese. This has led to an increase in the number of users of the language learning app Duolingo in the United States to take a crash course in Mandarin.
according to Duolingo, the app saw nearly 216% growth in new Mandarin learning in the US compared to this time last year, with a sharp spike in mid-January as RedNote adoption began. Additionally, the company reports that in its “How did you hear about us” survey that new users are asked to answer, it is seeing a similar rise in people choosing “TikTok” as their response.
“Oh, now you’re learning Mandarin,” the company joked. In X’s post Tuesday. She also posted a video on TikTok to promote the use of her app to learn Chinese. The short video showed the company’s green owl mascot at the airport heading to China and overlaid with text saying “I’m because I’d rather move to China and learn Mandarin on Duolingo.” The video currently has half a million likes. Another more recent video focusing on teaching Mandarin phrases to “TikTok refugees” has received more than 620,000 likes.
According to data from the application information provider Application formsConsumer demand for Duolingo’s language learning courses has also impacted the app’s install base.
The company notes that Duolingo saw a 36% increase in US downloads across the App Store and Google Play combined as of January 3 — an early sign that users may have been trying out different Chinese social apps before a RedNote joining wave emerges later in the month. .
A week ago, Duolingo ranked in the top 40 for best apps (excluding games) and best overall (including games). As of now, it is ranked 22nd on the list of best apps overall and 20th on the top apps.
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