Xiaohongshu's active user gender breakdown 2023

Many companies have tried to build social media platforms integrated with a direct online shopping function, yet the success of Xiaohongshu (known in English as Little Red Book or Red) was unprecedented. Launched in 2013 as an overseas shopping guide website, Xiaohongshu acquired more than 100 million active users and ranked in fourth place among all social media platforms. As of September 2023, around 68 percent of Xiaohongshu's active users were female.

What is Xiaohongshu?

Compared to another successful social commerce Pinduoduo, Xiaohongshu is targeted at young female users who demanded higher quality products. Before the second half of 2017, the major products sold on Xiaohongshu were imported goods, as its old slogan "discover good things in the world" indicated. Today, an increasing number of domestic products could also be found on its online shopping platform.

The scandal of Xiaohongshu

Xiaohongshu encourages its users to post various content, including product reviews, travel guides, and beauty tips. While reading a product review, users could directly place orders for the same product via Xiaohongshu's online shopping platform. However, the reliance on user-generated content also led Xiaohongshu into trouble. In 2019, Xiaohongshu was taken down from the Chinese app store for two months for illegal content, resulting in a loss of nearly 20 million monthly active users.