TikTok parent company ByteDance appears to hope lightning can strike twice within the U.S. market with its Lemon8 app.

Introduced in Japan in 2020, Lemon8 launched within the U.S. this past February — around the identical time legislative efforts to limit TikTok ramped up — and inside one month, it briefly ranked among the many top 10 most downloaded apps on the U.S. App Store.

On the app, users can post and examine beauty, fashion and lifestyle content — namely in the shape of static photos, though video-sharing is an option as well — and, like TikTok, the app’s central feature is its “For You” page, which features content tailored to a user’s interests.

Beauty and wellness are amongst Lemon8’s most distinguished content categories, and while the in-app experience is comparable in some respects to TikTok — through which ByteDance is heavily promoting Lemon8 — its look and performance is more akin to a Pinterest archetype.

Though ByteDance declined to comment on the scale or composition of Lemon8’s user base, data from Apptopia indicates the platform, said by ByteDance to still be in beta testing, has garnered greater than 17 million downloads globally since its 2020 debut.

A swipe through the “Beauty” tab depicts a wide selection of posts: There are the breakdowns of users’ bedtime ingestible lineups, slideshows outlining TJ Maxx beauty aisle go-to’s, dupe roundups and greater than a couple of “beauty suggestions I wish I had known sooner” compilations.

So far as what defines “success” on the platform — this continues to be unclear, maybe even to Lemon8 itself.

Engagement stays nascent — its #Beauty hashtag counts just over 19.1 million total views, with the hashtag’s most viral posts garnering fewer than 10,000 likes each. BeautyTok heavyweights like Alix Earle and Xandra Pohl don’t appear to have taken to the platform yet; moderately, a conversational community of nano- and microinfluencers comprise much of Lemon8’s energetic user base.

Brand pages, notably, are absent (no sign of E.l.f. Beauty yet).

Said a spokesperson for ByteDance: “Lemon8 is making a community where people discover and share content related to beauty, fashion, travel, in a more authentic and diverse environment. By providing a spot to share content and connect with others with similar interests, we see Lemon8 as a platform to encourage creativity and share ideas to profit everyone in our community.”

Marwa Islam, who creates short-form eye makeup tutorials for a TikTok audience of just over 51,000, joined Lemon8 in April and has since shared 16 posts; one in every of them being her usual video tutorial, and the others, carousel posts of certain points of her beauty routine, with explanatory captions breaking down individual product pros and cons.

“I definitely think [Lemon8] has the prospect of becoming a serious platform; no person expected TikTok to get big, however it did,” said Islam, alluding to users’ initial hesitation to embrace TikTok within the aftermath of its 2018 consolidation with Musical.ly. “[Lemon8’s] versatility makes it convenient to make amazing posts.”

Unlike on TikTok, where commenting under a video is more of a way to have interaction with other viewers than with the unique poster, Lemon8 comment sections are intimate, often fostering back-and-forth between a poster and viewer.

The #CharlotteTilbury hashtag has 581,000 views on Lemon8, and is continuously mentioned alongside E.l.f., dupe discourse and “Clean Girl Makeup” — a minimal makeup aesthetic which originated last yr on TikTok, but evidently has legs across the ByteDance universe.

Other continuously mentioned beauty brands on the platform include Dior Beauty, which has 2 million hashtag views; Laneige, with 1.6 million hashtag views, and Glow Recipe, which counts 258,300 views.