“Oh so NOW you’re studying Mandarin,” Duolingo tweeted on Monday.
The timing couldn’t be clearer, as a wave of so-called TikTok refugees scrambled to affix the Chinese social app RedNote forward of TikTok’s looming U.S. ban. The ban, set to take effect on January 19 until blocked by the Supreme Court docket, will reduce off TikTok from its 170 million American customers. However as an alternative of sulking, greater than 700 million globally are leaping ship to RedNote, identified in China as Xiaohongshu. For a lot of U.S. customers, there’s only one downside: The app’s default language is Mandarin.
Many at the moment are taking a crash course. The favored language-learning app Duolingo reported roughly 216% progress in new Mandarin studying within the U.S. in comparison with this time final yr, with a pointy spike occurring mid-January, simply as RedNote began gaining traction. When new customers have been prompted to reply, “How did you hear about us,” the corporate reviews seeing a corresponding spike in folks choosing “TikTok” as their response.
“Me, as a result of I’d fairly transfer to China & be taught Mandarin on Duolingo,” the official Duolingo TikTok account posted yesterday. The clip options the corporate’s inexperienced owl mascot, passport in hand, on the airport heading to China. One other video educating newbie Mandarin phrases consists of translations like “Welcome, TikTok refugee” and the tongue-in-cheek “Within the clerb all of us be taught Mandarin.”
TechCrunch reported that rising shopper demand for Duolingo’s language studying programs has additionally impacted the app’s set up base. Based on knowledge from app intelligence supplier Appfigures, Duolingo skilled a 36% enhance in U.S. downloads on the App Retailer and Google Play mixed as of January 3. This spike suggests customers could have explored varied Chinese language social apps earlier than the surge to affix RedNote gained momentum later within the month. Only a week in the past, Duolingo ranked within the 40s for each Prime Apps (excluding video games) and Prime Total (together with video games). As of now, it has climbed to No. 22 in Prime Total and No. 20 in Prime Apps.
No matter TikTok’s future holds, the RedNote migration is attention-grabbing on condition that one of many principal causes behind TikTok’s ban was concern of Chinese language firms hoarding U.S. customers’ private knowledge for nefarious use. Because it seems, not solely are folks unbothered-they’re rolling out the welcome mat.