ChinAI #277: The Encyclopedia of Living
A profile of Xiaohongshu as a different kind of search engine
Greetings from a world where…
I have found the TV show Lost, and it is still addicting
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Feature Translation: How many times do you search Xiaohongshu every day?
Context: Recently, tech worker Tan Min was making plans for the National Day holiday (October 1). After years of leaving her golden retriever at a pet shop, she wanted to take her dog with her this time, but she could not figure out the regulations to register her pet at the airport. The most common piece of advice she got from her friends: Why don’t you search this on Xiaohongshu? As this week’s feature article from Huxiu reports (link to original Chinese), When she typed in “how to check in a golden retriever at Beijing Daxing International Airport” in the search box, Tan Min unlocked a new world:
Someone has sorted out the entire process of checking in pets at Beijing Daxing International Airport, including tutorials on how to use mini-programs to get 20 RMB coupons; someone has listed the precautions before checking in, which is as detailed as a doctor's preoperative guidance; and someone else even filmed the process of checking in a golden retriever into a short video, allowing Tan Min to experience it "on the scene" as if she were there.
In this week’s feature translation, we read about China’s fastest-growing social media platform Xiaohongshu (means “Little Red Book”). As Eleanor Olcutt writes in Financial Times, “Investors are betting that Xiaohongshu is one of a small group of Chinese tech unicorns that can look forward to a blockbuster initial public offering after delivering strong growth.”
Key Takeaways: Xiaohongshu has been labeled as “China’s answer to Instagram”, but the Chinese app’s search utility questions this glib comparison.
According to a recent “Xiaohongshu Top Ten Search Trends Insights” report, more than 70 percent of Xiaohongshu’s monthly active users use the app as a search tool. Only 36 percent of people use Instagram as a search tool (as in, they search for information the same way they would on Google.
The most frequent search times reflect the platform’s rise as a search engine for the problems and questions of ordinary people. From the article: “The issues that trigger phenomenon-level searches always revolve around ‘usefulness’: in the first half of the year, 10.22 million people researched ‘how to apply for a visa’ on Xiaohongshu, 1.36 million people searched for postures for ‘summer sunbathing’, and there were even 950,000 boys who searched for methods to ‘get back together’ on Xiaohongshu.”
How has Xiaohongshu become an “Encyclopedia of Living?” Three key steps:
First, at the end of 2013, when Xiaohongshu was starting out as a picture and note-sharing community, the team struggled with whether to cultivate user-generated content (UGC) or "professionally-generated content” (PGC). In those days, PGC content seemed to be the successful path, as Weibo, which focused on key opinion leaders, had the largest traffic. Douban, Xiaohongshu, and other UGC communities received the dreaded “niche” label. However, over time, with the continued spread of smartphones, ordinary users have become the main force of the Internet ecosystem.
Second, Covid was a turning point. “People who were confined at home flocked to Xiaohongshu to search for recipes and home fitness tutorials…The most popular content on the site changed from outfits and skin care to ‘how to make cold noodles’,” the article relays. Xiaohongshu’s monthly active users passed 100 million in the middle of 2020. At the beginning of 2023, Xiaohongshu’s daily active users also exceeded 100 million.
Third, Xiaohongshu integrated all the independent “information islands.” It has now become a collection of all these other lifestyle apps that focused on one vertical (e.g., Haohaozhu on housing decoration, Mafengwo for travel guides).
What is the role of recommendation algorithms in this super app’s rise? The technology only takes you so far; Xiaohongshu made particular decisions about the indicators of success for which they optimized.
Xiaohongshu wanted to make sure that they could fulfill “long-tail” searches (low search frequency): “These terms may not be related to popular or common sense topics, but they are crucial for people with specific needs. Tan Min's search for ‘checking in golden retrievers at Beijing Daxing Airport’ is a typical long-tail search scenario. For search platforms, optimizing long-tail terms can improve search quality and user experience. As of June 2024, ‘long-tail search terms’ accounted for more than 60% of all search terms on Xiaohongshu, while the average level of long-tail search terms in the industry was around 30%. This is why many search users often exclaimed ‘Xiaohongshu understands me’ and ‘you can even find this?!’”
The article contains more details about the platform’s decision to value certain types of content based on specific indicators: “For example, in 2017, Xiaohongshu added the ‘CES (Customer Engagement Score)’ to the recommendation algorithm, which scores according to the interaction of likes, saves to collections, comments, reposts…Most content platforms have this system, but which interaction dimension has a higher weight determines the content value orientation of this platform. In the early days, the interaction indicators related to ‘usefulness’ on Xiaohongshu had a higher weight than those related to ‘fun’.”
As further evidence of this, in 2019, Xiaohongshu adopted SAU (Search Active Users) as another core indicator, which measures the average number of searches per person — as opposed to the amount of time users stay on the app.
For more lifestyle trends on Xiaohongshu like “Dopamine Dressing Style” and Surfskate, see FULL TRANSLATION: How many times do you search Xiaohongshu every day?
ChinAI Links (Four to Forward)
Must-attend: My book launch event at Elliott School of International Affairs
Register for the launch event of my book Technology and the Rise of Great Powers on September 3rd, 12-1:30PM, at The Elliott School of International Affairs. The event will be hybrid, so you can tune in online as well. I’ll give a brief talk, then Richard Danzig, former Secretary of the Navy, will give discussant remarks, and then we’ll open it up to a general Q&A.
Should-listen: Innovation Files podcast
It was great to talk about my book with Rob Atkinson and Jackie Whisman on the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation’s podcast. Thanks as well to ITIF for featuring my book on its summer 2024 reading list!
Should-read: Planet TikTok
One thing that frustrates me about policy debates on TikTok is that the most vocal voices are people who haven’t actually spent time on the app. They would do well to read Yi-Ling Liu’s piece for The New York Review on what it’s like on TikTok, including what would be lost of the U.S. banned the it.
Should-read: China’s Real Economic Crisis
For Foreign Affairs, Zongyuan Zoe Liu pinpoints the structural disorder of the Chinese economy — overcapacity:
“At the center of Beijing’s overcapacity problem is the burden placed on local authorities to develop China’s industrial base. Top-down industrial plans are designed to reward the cities and regions that can deliver the most GDP growth, by providing incentives to local officials to allocate capital and subsidies to prioritized sectors…These planning directives and campaigns put enormous pressure on local party chiefs to achieve rapid results, which they may see as crucial for promotion within the party. Consequently, these officials have strong incentives to make highly leveraged investments in priority sectors, irrespective of whether these moves are likely to be profitable.”
Thank you for reading and engaging.
These are Jeff Ding's (sometimes) weekly translations of Chinese-language musings on AI and related topics. Jeff is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University.
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Any suggestions or feedback? Let me know at chinainewsletter@gmail.com or on Twitter at @jjding99
With all due respect, your ITIF podcast should be "must listen," not "should listen"!