Lemon8, developed by TikTok owner ByteDance, is in App Store’s top five: What is known about it?

Lemon8, an app developed by ByteDance, the Chinese company that created TikTok, is similar to both Instagram and Pinterest: you can make posts with photos and videos here. And while TikTok is accused of collecting sensitive information about users, and some countries want to ban it altogether, Lemon8 is actively gaining momentum: millions of people download the app, including in the United States. The app was recently ranked #5 in the App Store's Lifestyle category, ahead of apps like Pinterest and Tinder.

Bloomberg believes that due to its connection with ByteDance, this app should be kept under constant scrutiny. It is true that the owner of Lemon8 in the App Store is the Singapore company Heliophilia Pte. Singapore's public company registry, however, reveals that Heliophilia Pte is actually located at the same address as TikTok's local headquarters.

The director of Heliophilia is Zhou Qin, a Singaporean. However, Reuters reported last year that Alex Zhu, ByteDance's senior vice president of product and strategy and former TikTok CEO, is actually behind Lemon8. There is also little information in the Japanese media that there is an obvious connection between ByteDance and Lemon8. And this connection, according to Bloomberg reporters, makes one wonder whether it is worth using Lemon8, given that this app can also have data security problems like TikTok.

Interestingly, the Lemon8 app was launched in Japan in April 2020, but only recently began actively promoting it in the US and UK amid the problems TikTok has recently faced in those countries. The app developer pays influencers and content creators to post on Lemon8 and create TikTok promo videos about Lemon8.

It's possible that ByteDance plans to create a TikTok + Lemon8 link so that users stay in the same ecosystem and use Instagram and third-party apps that aren't owned by ByteDance less.