US Market
Amid a looming ban on TikTok in the United States, content creators have been pushing the platform’s sister app. Lemon8 resembles an amalgamation of the types of short-form videos found on TikTok and the picture-perfect aesthetic of Instagram and Pinterest.
Like its popular relation, Lemon8 is owned by China-based ByteDance, whose collection of internationally available apps also includes the video-editing app CapCut and the photo- and art-editing app Hypic. In addition, the company operates Douyin, the Chinese sibling of TikTok that follows Beijing’s strict censorship rules.
Lemon8 launched in the US in 2023, a few years after it first popped up in Asian markets. Though it garnered some media and user interest in its early days, the app hasn’t taken off as much as TikTok, which has more than 170 million US users.
But more people have downloaded the app in the past month, making it one of the top-ranking free apps on Apple’s app store. Lemon8’s popularity could potentially soar further, depending on the outcome of a US Supreme Court hearing Friday over a law requiring TikTok to break ties with ByteDance or face a US ban.
TikTok says it plans to shut down the platform in the US by January 19 if the government prevails, as it did in a lower court.