The days of TikTok in the US maybe it will be over soon. The app is scheduled to be banned on Sunday, unless a US buyer or the Supreme Court intervened.

Meanwhile, there is another app owned by TikTok’s parent company ByteDance that is making waves. lemon8 is currently the most downloaded lifestyle app in the Apple’s App Store and has over 10 million downloads on Google Play store.

“Lemon8 is a lifestyle community-focused app powered by TikTok, where you can discover and share authentic content on a variety of topics such as beauty, fashion, travel, food, and more,” the description says. in the app can be read in both stores.

Here’s what you need to know about Lemon8.

Note: I contacted ByteDance for this story, and the company did not respond for comment.

What is Lemon8?

Lemon8 is a video and photo sharing platform that eschews TikTok’s vertical-scrolling format in favor of a Pinterest-style format. But what Lemon8 and TikTok both have in common are the Following and For You tabs to show you posts from creators you follow and posts the app thinks you’ll like.

The content of Lemon8 is divided into six topical tabs, in addition to a seventh tab called all. Other tabs are Fashion, Beauty, fOOD, BENEFITS, GETTING and house. These tabs can be found at the top of your screen, and tapping on these tabs will show you recommended and suggested posts.

Posts can be swipeable photo collections like Instagram, or TikTok-style videos. Some creators add text to their photos to brand clothing or a product. Some will also include the price of the item in the text.

How is Lemon8 different from TikTok and other apps?

Lemon8 differs from other apps in what is posted and how it is presented.

Lemon8 has many influencer ads and product recommendations. It’s hard to tell what is and isn’t sponsored content, and this seems to be the norm throughout the app. TikTok also has sponsored content, but it’s usually labeled as such in the bottom left corner.

There aren’t many memes or jokes in Lemon8 compared to other apps, either. You can find memes on Lemon8, but various hashtags related to “memes,” such as “funnymemes” and “catmemes,” have less than 1 million views (as opposed to hundreds of millions of Instagram). This could be because Lemon8 is still going strong in the US, but my suspicion is that Lemon8 is not for memes. It is meant to be more than a guidebook to help you achieve a certain lifestyle or aesthetic.

There are also many articles on Lemon8. For example, post captions can include instructions for a recipe or a more in-depth breakdown of an outfit. TikTok captions can contain useful information, but those captions are more about connecting posts with hashtags to get more views and not necessarily adding new information to the TikTok post. Lemon8 uses captions in the same way as Instagram posts, but Lemon8 captions have one key difference from Instagram: templates.

Lemon8 lets you use templates for your posts to help you format easily and give you an idea of ​​what to caption your post. There are caption templates for fashion, shopping searches, beauty, food and travel.

Lemon8 reminds me of a mashup between magazines Martha Stewart Alive, Muscle and Strength and Travel + Entertainment. You can find some useful tips on Lemon8 to help you achieve a desired aesthetic or find some vacation inspiration, but it is not clear what is and is not an ad.

What are people saying about Lemon8?

People’s reaction to Lemon8 seems to be positive so far. A TikTok creator posted a video calls Lemon8 “Pinterest, but interactive.” other said Lemon8 is a combination of Pinterest, Instagram and TikTok.

However, this positivity can be artificially inflated. ZDNet reported that several TikTok posts about Lemon8 described the app with similar language, leading some to believe that ByteDance paid its creators.

And some claims by the creators of Lemon8 make this theory more feasible. A creator of Lemon8 spoke Inside that ByteDance paid them to post on the app. Two other Lemon8 creators have revealed emails to Insider outlining the app’s payment structure.

Should you download Lemon8?

Lemon8 is free so even if you are a little curious you can download and try the app. Just be aware that the app’s posts resemble instructional guides more than memes to share, and many posts feel like ads.

Who owns Lemon8?

ByteDancethe Chinese tech company that owns TikTok, also owns Lemon8. According to ZDNetByteDance is positioning Lemon8 to rival Instagram as many users stop using, or abandon, the Meta app.

According to Wall Street Journala leaked internal memo from Meta shows that Instagram engagement is declining. ByteDance executives may be hoping to capitalize on this by giving Instagram users an alternative app in the form of Lemon8. And while Lemon8 was released globally in 2020, the app’s recent growth may indicate that ByteDance’s gamble is paying off.

What is Lemon8’s privacy policy?

Most of Lemon8’s privacy policy seems to be standard for social media apps. It states that Lemon8 collects personal and location information to provide you with a better app experience. Other collected information includes your IP address and browsing history. But part of the app’s privacy policy may raise eyebrows.

“The personal information we collect from you may be stored on a server located outside of your country of residence,” the policy reads. The company has servers around the world, according to policy, so your information can be stored in any of them.

This is different from how Lemon8’s sister app TikTok stores some user data. The company stores US based user data on Oracle servers. TikTok CEO Shou Chew said that ByteDance’s employees in China can access this data, but there are “strong cybersecurity controls and permissions” overseen by a security team that based in the US.

For more on social media, see how you can use social media for good and how social media apps like Beral and Mastodon are going to be the next big thing.