Xiǎo(Little)hóng(Red)shū(Book) (小红书), abbreviated as XHS, is a Chinese social network and e-commerce platform that launched in 2013. The platform is largely consumerist and predominately female.¹⁾²⁾ For international markets, the platform occasionally uses the localized name of RedNote.

In 2013, two entrepreneurs, Wénchāo(Charlwin) Máo³⁾ and Fāng(Miranda) Qú,⁴⁾ published a shopping guide for travelers called the “Little Red Book: 'Outbound' Shopping Guide” (小红书出境购物攻略). The PDF amassed 500,000 downloads, so they quickly began work on an app, initially targeting Hong Kong tourism, and hoped that users traveling abroad for Chinese New Year would be inclined to report back on their discoveries.

Given its heavy consumerist focus, Xiaohongshu would gather the reputation of being “an app that you open before Taobao”, so they naturally cut out the middleman and began experimenting with e-commerce in August 2014⁵⁾ with a viral Apivita product.⁶⁾ Their potential value then shot up, given the investments from Alibaba and Tencent in 2018,⁷⁾⁸⁾ and the foreign IPO rumors.^9)10)11)12)

As the company looked into attracting an international audience, even using a localized name,¹³⁾ it had this unexpected breakthrough on January 13, 2025 when people were protesting the TikTok ban in the United States.^14)15)16) This didn't quite last, especially once alternatives like UpScrolled emerged, but it would give the company a reason to put more effort into an English-language interface for foreign users.

• In order to log into the desktop website, you'll have to scan the QR code. From there, the app asks to verify that you actually want to sign in, then agree to the terms and conditions if you haven't.
• Personally, I recall discovering XHS while looking at local Asian supermarkets with two names, but I didn't think it was worth the hassle of singing up. However, the international surge was so funny, it became worth doing. That being said, we did get insights like “some emojis have a different meaning”, and people unironically thought Friends was an accurate depiction of the United States.
• The downside is that there's a lot of 'AI slop', which I haven't found any toggle for, and I keep getting those Minecraft build videos that go “rúguǒ nǐ gāng rù kēng MC” (如果你刚入坑MC).

• Xiaohongshu - The official website.
  • @xiaohongshu on Twitter - The official Twitter account.
• Xiaohongshu on Baidu Baike