TikTok’s days in the US may soon be over. The app will be halted on Sunday unless a US buyer or the Supreme Court intervenes.
Meanwhile, there’s another app owned by TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, that’s making waves. Lemon8 is currently the most downloaded lifestyle app on the Apple App Store and has over 10 million downloads on the Google Play store.
“Lemon8 is an app focused on the lifestyle community powered by TikTok, where you can discover and share authentic content on a variety of topics such as beauty, fashion, travel, food and more,” reads the app’s description on it the two shops.
Here’s what you need to know about Lemon8.
Note: I reached out to ByteDance for this story, and the company did not respond for comment.
What is lemon 8?
Lemon8’s posts may contain text to help label objects in the post.
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 topic tabs, plus a seventh named tab All of them. The other tabs are Fashion, Beauty, Food, Wellness, Travel AND house. These tabs can be found at the top of your screen and tapping on these tabs shows you recommended and suggested posts.
Posts can be slideshow collections of photos like on Instagram, or TikTok-style videos. Some creators add text to their photos to tag clothing or a product. Some will even 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 posted and how it is presented.
Lemon8 has many influencer ads and product recommendations. It’s hard to tell what is and isn’t sponsored content and that seems to be the norm across the app. TikTok also has sponsored content, but these are usually marked as such in the lower left corner.
Memes don’t seem to be catching on at Lemon8.
There aren’t many memes or jokes in Lemon8 compared to other apps. You can find memes on Lemon8, but various meme-related hashtags, like “funnymemes” and “catmemes,” have less than 1 million views (compared to hundreds of millions on Instagram). This may be because Lemon8 is still prevalent in the US, but my suspicion is that Lemon8 is not meant to be a meme. It’s meant to be more of a guidebook to help you achieve a certain lifestyle or aesthetic.
There is also a lot of writing on Lemon8. For example, post captions can include instructions for a recipe or a deeper breakdown of an outfit. TikTok captions can have useful information, but those captions are more about linking posts with hashtags to get more views and don’t necessarily add new information to the TikTok post. Lemon8 uses captions in a similar way to 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.
Lemon8 lets you use templates for your posts to help you format quickly and give you an idea of what you should title your post. There are caption templates for fashion, shopping finds, beauty, food and travel.
Lemon8 reminds me of a mix between Martha Stewart Living, Muscle & Fitness and Travel + Leisure magazines. You can find some helpful tips on Lemon8 to help you achieve a desired aesthetic or find some holiday inspiration, but it’s not clear what is and isn’t an ad.
What are people saying about Limon8?
People’s reaction to Lemon8 seems positive so far. A TikTok creator posted a video calling Lemon8 “Pinterest, but interactive.” Another said that Lemon8 is a combination of Pinterest, Instagram and TikTok.
However, this positivity can be artificially inflated. ZDNet reports that many TikTok posts about Lemon8 have described the app in similar language, leading some to believe that ByteDance paid these creators.
And some claims by the creators of Lemon8 make this theory sound more viable. A Lemon8 creator told Insider that ByteDance paid them to post on the app. Two other Lemon8 creators pointed to 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 know that the app’s posts are more like how-to guides than shareable memes, and many posts feel like ads.
Who owns Lemon8?
ByteDance, the Chinese tech company that owns TikTok, also owns Lemon8. According to ZDNet, ByteDance is positioning Lemon8 as a rival to Instagram as more users stop using or abandon Meta’s app.
According to the Wall Street Journal, an internal memo leaked by Meta indicated that engagement on Instagram was declining. ByteDance executives may hope to capitalize on this by giving Instagram users an alternative app in the form of Lemon8. And while Lemon8 was released globally in 2020, the app’s recent growth may indicate that ByteDance’s gamble is paying off.
What is Lemon8’s privacy policy?
Lemon8’s travel tab may give you inspiration for your next getaway.
Most of Lemon8’s privacy policy seems standard for social media apps. It says 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 part of the app’s privacy policy may raise eyebrows.
“The personal information we collect from you may be stored on a server located outside of your country of residence,” the policy states. The company has servers all over the world, according to policy, so your information can 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 Chief Executive Officer Shou Chew said ByteDance employees in China can access this data, but with “robust cybersecurity controls and authorization approval” overseen by a US-based security team.
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.
