(Photo by Jens Kalaene/picture alliance via Getty Image)
If you’ve stopped visiting RedNote, you're not alone. Visits to the app from US users plunged after TikTok decided to continue operating in the country.
According to internet traffic monitor Similarweb, RedNote's daily active users reached 32.5 million on Sunday, Jan. 19 but dropped to 14.9 million users the next day, a 54% dip.
TikTok briefly went dark over the weekend to comply with US law but was restored after about 12 hours after President Trump said he would intervene following his inauguration. He later signed an executive order calling on the Justice Department not to enforce the law for 75 days.
(Credit: Similarweb)As Jan. 19 approached, TikTok fans went in search of alternatives, and RedNote briefly filled that gap. During the first week of January, RedNote only had about 300,000 active users in the US. Last week, RedNote’s active users exploded to around 15 million before culminating with 32.5 million on Jan. 19.
However, RedNote is in Mandarin and has some censorship issues, so it didn't work for everyone. Once TikTok was back online, the ByteDance-owned app saw 106.8 million active users from iOS and Android, a record high in the past year, Similarweb said.
Trump's goal is to find a US buyer for the app. But if he can’t, the ban should theoretically kick in again. In the meantime, both Apple and Google have removed TikTok from their app stores to avoid hefty fees for violating the law, preventing new users from installing it.