Is Lemon8 a good replacement for TikTok? Here's what you need to know

TikTok Days in the US it may end soon. The app is set to be banned on Sundays unless Buyer from USA or on The Supreme Court intervenes.

Meanwhile, there's another app owned by TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, that's making waves. Lemon 8 is currently the most downloaded lifestyle app in the Apple's App Store and has over 10 million downloads in Google Play Store.

“Lemon8 is a community-focused lifestyle app powered by TikTok where you can discover and share authentic content on a variety of topics like 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 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 tab called Everyone. The other tabs are Fashion, Beauty, Food, Wellness, Travel and At home. These cards can be found at the top of the screen, and tapping on these cards will show you recommended and suggested posts.

Posts can be draggable photo collections like on Instagram or TikTok-style videos. Some creators add text to their photos to tag 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 is different from other apps in terms of what is published and how it is presented.

Lemon8 has lots of influencer ads and product endorsements. It's hard to tell what is and isn't sponsored content, and this seems to be the norm across the app. TikTok also has sponsored content, but usually they are marked as such in the bottom left corner.

There aren't many memes or jokes on Lemon8 compared to other apps. You can find memes on Lemon8, but various meme-related hashtags, such as “funnymemes” and “catmemes,” have less than 1 million views (versus Instagram's hundreds of millions). This could be because Lemon8 is still catching on in the US, but my suspicion is that Lemon8 is not meant for memes. It's meant to be more of a guide to help you achieve a certain lifestyle or aesthetic.

There is also a lot of writing in Lemon8. For example, post captions might include recipe instructions or a more in-depth 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 a 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 them and give you an idea of ​​what to write in your post. There are post templates for fashion, shopping finds, beauty, food, and travel.

Lemon8 reminds me of a mix between magazines Martha Stewart Living, Muscles and fitness and Travel + Leisure. At Lemon8, you can find some helpful tips to help you achieve your desired aesthetic or find some vacation inspiration, but it's not clear what is and isn't an ad.

What are people saying about Lemon8?

People's reaction to Lemon8 has been seemingly positive so far. A TikTok creator post a video calling Lemon8 “Pinterest, but interactive.” Another one said Lemon8 is a combination of Pinterest, Instagram and TikTok.

However, this positivity could be artificially inflated. ZDNet reports that many TikTok posts about Lemon8 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 tenable. A creator of Lemon8 stated Insider that ByteDance paid them to post on the app. Two other Lemon8 creators showed 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 look more like tutorials than shareable memes, and many posts feel like ads.

Who owns Lemon8?

ByteDancethe Chinese tech company that owns TikTok also owns Lemon8. According to ZDNetByteDance is positioning Lemon8 to rival Instagram as more users stop using or leave Meta's app.

According to The Wall Street Journala leaked internal memo from Meta showed that engagement on Instagram was declining. ByteDance executives could 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 show that ByteDance's gamble is paying off.

What is Lemon8's privacy policy?

Most of Lemon8's privacy policy seems standard for social media apps. It states that Lemon8 collects personal and location information to provide you with a better experience with the app. 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 the country where you live,” the policy says. The company has servers around the world, according to policy, so your information may be stored in any of them.

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

For more on social media, check out how you can use social media for good and how social media apps like Bereal and Mastodon could be the next big thing.