TikTok faces one other sale deadline Saturday, and except a US purchaser intervenes — or President Donald Trump extends the deadline once more — the app might disappear for US customers. If the ban goes into impact, TikTok would not be the one app to vanish: TikTok’s sister app, Lemon8, could possibly be caught within the crossfire.
Learn extra: A VPN Alone In all probability Will not Bypass TikTok Bans. This is Why
Lemon8 is owned by ByteDance, the identical mum or dad firm that owns TikTok. It is one of many high Life-style apps in Apple’s App Retailer, and it has greater than 10 million downloads within the Google Play retailer.
“Lemon8 is a way of life neighborhood targeted app powered by TikTok, the place you’ll be able to uncover and share genuine content material on a wide range of matters reminiscent of magnificence, trend, journey, meals, and extra,” the app’s description reads in each shops.
This is what you have to find out about Lemon8.
Word: I reached out to ByteDance for this story, and the corporate didn’t reply for remark.
What’s Lemon8?
Lemon8 posts can include textual content to assist label objects within the publish.
Lemon8 is a video- and photo-sharing platform that eschews the vertical-scrolling format of TikTok in favor of a Pinterest board-style format. However what Lemon8 and TikTok do have in frequent is that each have Following and For You tabs to indicate you posts from creators you comply with and posts the app thinks you’ll like.
Lemon8’s content material is break up into six subject tabs, plus a seventh tab known as All. The opposite tabs are Trend, Magnificence, Meals, Wellness, Journey and Residence. These tabs may be discovered throughout the highest of your display screen, and tapping into these tabs exhibits you really useful and prompt posts.
Posts may be swipeable picture collections like in Instagram, or TikTok-style movies. Some creators add textual content to their images to label clothes or a product. Some can even embody the worth of the merchandise within the textual content.
How is Lemon8 totally different from TikTok and different apps?
Lemon8 is totally different from different apps by way of what’s posted and the way it’s offered.
Lemon8 has a whole lot of influencer advertisements and product suggestions. It is tough to inform what’s and is not sponsored content material, and this seems to be the norm throughout the app. TikTok additionally has sponsored content material, however often these are marked as such within the bottom-left nook.
Memes aren’t catching on in Lemon8.
There aren’t a whole lot of memes or jokes on Lemon8 in comparison with different apps, both. Yow will discover memes on Lemon8, however numerous hashtags related to “memes,” like “funnymemes” and “catmemes,” have fewer than 1 million views (versus a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands on Instagram). This could possibly be as a result of Lemon8 continues to be catching on within the US, however my suspicion is Lemon8 is not meant for memes. It is meant to be extra of a guidebook that will help you obtain a sure life-style or aesthetic.
There’s additionally a whole lot of writing in Lemon8. For instance, publish captions may embody directions for a recipe or a deeper breakdown of an outfit. TikTok captions can have helpful info, however these captions are extra about connecting posts to hashtags to get extra views and do not essentially add new info to the TikTok publish. Lemon8 makes use of captions in the same strategy to Instagram posts, however Lemon8 captions have one key distinction from Instagram: templates.
Lemon8 templates can assist you shortly make, or offer you an concept of what to incorporate in, captions.
Lemon8 helps you to use templates to your posts that will help you shortly format and to provide you an concept of what to caption your publish. There are caption templates for trend, procuring finds, magnificence, meals and journey.
Lemon8 jogs my memory of a mashup between the magazines Martha Stewart Residing, Muscle & Health and Journey + Leisure. Yow will discover some helpful ideas in Lemon8 that will help you obtain a desired aesthetic or discover some trip inspiration, however it’s not clear what’s and is not an advert.
What are folks saying about Lemon8?
Folks’s response to Lemon8 is seemingly optimistic up to now. One TikTok creator posted a video calling Lemon8 “Pinterest, however interactive.” One other mentioned Lemon8 is a mixture of Pinterest, Instagram and TikTok.
Nonetheless, this positivity could possibly be artificially inflated. ZDNet reviews that many TikTok posts about Lemon8 have described the app with comparable language, making some imagine ByteDance paid these creators.
And a few Lemon8 creators’ claims make this concept sound extra viable. One Lemon8 creator informed Insider that ByteDance paid them to publish on the app. Two different Lemon8 creators confirmed Insider emails that outlined the app’s fee construction.
Who owns Lemon8?
ByteDance, the Chinese language tech firm that owns TikTok, additionally owns Lemon8. In keeping with ZDNet, ByteDance is positioning Lemon8 to be an Instagram rival as extra customers cease utilizing, or abandon, Meta’s app.
In keeping with the Wall Road Journal, a leaked inner memo from Meta confirmed that Instagram engagement was declining. ByteDance executives could possibly be hoping to capitalize on this by giving Instagram customers another app within the type of Lemon8. And whereas Lemon8 was launched globally in 2020, the app’s latest progress may present ByteDance’s gamble is paying off.
Will Lemon8 be banned alongside TikTok?
Since Lemon8 is owned by ByteDance, which additionally owns TikTok, it is attainable that the app will likely be banned alongside TikTok on April 5.
The regulation requiring the sale of TikTok could possibly be utilized typically to different apps which might be owned and operated by ByteDance and its subsidiaries. When TikTok shutdown operations within the US in January, Lemon8 was shutdown alongside the app. If TikTok shuts down once more, Lemon8 possible will as properly.
Must you obtain Lemon8?
Even with a shutdown looming, Lemon8 is free, so you’ll be able to obtain and check out the app now earlier than the sale deadline. Simply know the app’s posts resemble tutorial guides greater than memes to share, and lots of posts really feel like commercials.
What’s Lemon8’s privateness coverage?
Lemon8’s journey tab may give you inspiration to your subsequent getaway.
Most of Lemon8’s privateness coverage appears customary for social media apps. It states Lemon8 collects private and placement info to offer you a greater app expertise. Some collected info contains your IP deal with and looking historical past. However a part of the app’s privateness coverage may increase eyebrows.
“The private info we accumulate from you might be saved on a server situated exterior of the nation the place you reside,” the coverage reads. The corporate has servers around the globe, in line with the coverage, so your info could possibly be saved in any of them.
That is totally different from how Lemon8’s sister app TikTok shops some consumer’s information. The corporate shops US-based consumer information in Oracle servers. TikTok CEO Shou Chew mentioned ByteDance staff in China can entry this information, however with “strong cybersecurity controls and authorization approval” overseen by a US-based safety staff.
For extra on the TikTok ban, this is what to know in regards to the Supreme Court docket’s determination, this is what might occur subsequent and listed below are different apps customers are flocking to.