What you need to know about Lemon8 and how it’s different from TikTok

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld a law that effectively bans the social media app TikTok in the US starting Sunday. So unless a US buyer stepped in, the app may be a thing of the past in the states.

Read more: Supreme Court upholds TikTok ban in US

But there’s another app, owned by TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, that’s making waves. Lemon8 is the best lifestyle app in Apple’s App Storeand has more than 10 million downloads in 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 both stores.

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 Lemon8?

Lemon8 is a video and photo sharing platform that eschews TikTok’s vertically 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 sections to show you posts from creators you follow and posts the app thinks you’ll like.

Lemon8’s content is divided into six themed sections, plus a seventh section called Everyone. The other sections are Fashion, beauty, food, Wellness, Travel and Home. These tabs can be found at the top of your screen and tapping on them shows recommended and suggested posts.

Posts can be draggable collections of photos, like on Instagram, or TikTok-style videos. Some creators add text to their photos to label an outfit 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 very influential ads and product endorsements. It’s hard to tell what is and isn’t sponsored content, and that seems to be the norm on the app. TikTok also has sponsored content, but they are usually marked as such in the bottom left corner.

Lemon8 also doesn’t have many memes or jokes 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 (as opposed to hundreds of millions on Instagram). This could be because Lemon8 is still catching on in the US, but my suspicion is that Lemon8 is not meant for memes. It is meant to be more of a guide to help you achieve a certain lifestyle or aesthetic.

There is also a lot of writing at Lemon8. For example, post captions can include instructions for a recipe or a more in-depth 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 the 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 quickly format and give you an idea of ​​what to title your post. There are caption templates for fashion, shopping, beauty, food and travel.

Lemon8 reminds me of a mix between magazines Martha Stewart lives, Muscles and fitness and Travel + free time. You can find some helpful tips on Lemon8 to help you achieve a desired aesthetic or find vacation inspiration, but it’s unclear what is and isn’t advertising.

What are people saying about Lemon8?

People’s reaction to Lemon8 seems to be positive so far. One creator of TikTok post a video calling Lemon8 “Pinterest but interactive.” another Lemon8 said is a combination of Pinterest, Instagram and TikTok.

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

And some claims by Lemon8’s creators make that theory sound more viable. One Lemon8 creator said An insider that ByteDance paid them to post on the app. Two other Lemon8 creators showed internal emails that outlined 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 out the app. Just know that posts on the app look more like how-to guides than shareable memes, and many posts look like ads.

Who owns Lemon8?

ByteDancethe Chinese tech company that owns TikTok also owns Lemon8. According to ZDNetByteDance is positioning Lemon8 as a competitor to Instagram as more users stop using or abandon Meta’s app.

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

What is Lemon8’s privacy policy?

Most of Lemon8 privacy policy looks 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 some of the app’s privacy policy may raise some eyebrows.

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

This is different from how Lemon8 TikTok’s sister app stores some user data. Company stores US-based user data on Oracle servers. TikTok CEO Shou Chew said ByteDance employees in China had access to that data, but with “robust cybersecurity controls and authorization approval” overseen by a US-based security team.

For more on the TikTok ban, here’s what you need to know about The decision of the Supreme Courthere what might happen next and here they are other apps that users flock to.