When the government gives you lemons, make Lemon8.
Just as U.S. lawmakers push for a TikTok ban, Bytedance appears to be executing its backup plan, driving its social platform Lemon8, an Instagram rival, into the Top Charts of the App Store.
Prior to this week, the app had never ranked in the Top 200 Overall Charts in the U.S. App Store. However, since Monday, it has ranked in the Top 10, according to data.ai.
As TechCrunch reports this is a big move for the little-known app, which suggests this surge is the result of paid user acquisition on the publisher's part, possibly through paid discovery or app install ads.
Data from app intelligence provider Apptopia estimates that Lemon8 has gained 16 million global downloads since its launch in March 2020. It also estimates that the app currently has more than 4 million active users in the U.S.
While it's not yet clear how the company has been promoting Lemon8, TechCrunch suspects ByteDance has been leveraging its own channels to drive app installs, aka TikTok.
Quoting the report:
Over on TikTok, we noticed a number of creators recently began posting about Lemon8, with many new videos appearing in just the past 24 hours… A large number of them were positive reviews that push users to download the app. In fact, some creators even said they’re getting the app in case TikTok gets banned.
While it remains to be seen whether the app can serve as a reliable contingency plan in the event of a ban, the recent success of Lemon8 suggests that brands might want to establish a presence on the app if they haven't done so already.
