RedNote started as a set of PDF shopping guides
RedNote, known in China as Xiaohongshu, began as a set of PDF shopping guides for Chinese shoppers buying products overseas. Perspectism's reading is that people still use it the way they used those guides. They arrive with a question about something they want to buy, try or visit, and a post reaches them when it answers what they searched for. That changes how content has to be rebuilt before it goes there.
It started with shopping guides
Miranda Qu and Charlwin Mao founded Xiaohongshu in Shanghai. The guides were written for Chinese shoppers buying products overseas, to help someone shopping abroad work out what was worth buying.
A shopping guide gets opened when someone is about to spend money and wants an answer first. That habit of arriving with a question stayed with the platform as it grew, and it still explains why some content does well there and some goes nowhere.
The app's red colour scheme is reportedly inspired by the colours of Stanford Business School, where Charlwin Mao (Mao Wenchao) studied.
Then the shoppers started writing
Xiaohongshu grew into a platform where shoppers share their shopping experiences and review products. The advice stopped coming only from the guides and started coming from other shoppers: what they bought, and whether it was worth the money.
The whole platform runs on that shift. People trust other people more than they trust brands. A review from someone who paid for the product reads differently from the brand's own description of it, and Xiaohongshu built itself around the first kind.
Commerce came next. In 2014 Xiaohongshu launched an e-commerce platform connecting global retailers with Chinese consumers. The app where people compared products now also connected them with the retailers selling those products, so the reviews and the shopping sat in the same place.
Who uses Xiaohongshu now
Xiaohongshu says it has 300 million monthly active users, mostly in mainland China. Almost three-quarters of users are female, and half were born after 1995. Anyone thinking about posting there should start from that audience, because it decides what a post needs to answer and in what language.
The week US users arrived
On the evening of 13 January 2025, as a US TikTok ban loomed, Xiaohongshu rose to the top of the US Apple App Store's free chart. In about two days, more than 700,000 new users joined RedNote.
RedNote announced a new translation feature on 19 January 2025, less than a week after the influx began. In June 2025, Xiaohongshu opened a Hong Kong office, its first outside mainland China, to start its overseas expansion.
That was a real surge, and still a small one next to the user base RedNote already had.
Why search changes the repurposing job
On RedNote, distribution follows what people look for. Marketing agency WalkTheChat says a post's performance depends heavily on search volume and engagement, and that keywords in the post title are important. That is one agency's assessment, and it fits a platform that started as guides people opened when they had a purchase to make.
Repurposing for RedNote means rebuilding a piece around a search. A clip cut to stop a fast scroll can arrive missing the two things a searcher needs: a title that matches their question, and an answer they can use.
In practice, start from a question your audience would actually type and put those words in the title. Give the answer early. Then show the experience behind it: what you bought, tried or visited, and whether it was worth it. Shopper experience is what the platform grew up on, so a post without it reads like an ad.
What an existing piece could become
Take a hypothetical example. A Melbourne skincare brand has a long blog post comparing sunscreens for humid weather. On RedNote, it would work better as a post titled with the phrase a shopper would search, naming the product type and the problem, with the verdict up front and the reasoning after. The blog's introduction, brand story and closing pitch would go.
A second hypothetical: a travel creator has a YouTube video about a week in Tokyo. The full video suits someone who wants to sit back and watch. A RedNote version would pull out the decisions inside it, such as which neighbourhood to stay in or what was worth the money, and give each one its own post with its own searchable title.
This fits when your existing content already answers real questions about buying, trying or visiting something, and when your audience overlaps with the users described earlier. If your audience sits mostly outside China, the translation feature makes the platform easier to approach. Xiaohongshu describes its users as mostly in mainland China, so writing in Chinese, or working with someone who does, is likely to matter if you want to reach them.
Before repurposing anything for RedNote, ask what someone would search to find it, and whether the piece answers that in its first lines. If the honest answer is that nobody would search for it, the piece probably belongs somewhere else.
Frequently asked questions
Who founded RedNote?
Miranda Qu and Charlwin Mao founded Xiaohongshu in Shanghai. It started as PDF shopping guides before it became a platform for shopper reviews.
Why did RedNote top the US App Store in January 2025?
As a US TikTok ban loomed, Xiaohongshu rose to the top of the US Apple App Store's free chart on the evening of 13 January 2025, and more than 700,000 new users joined in about two days.
Does search matter for posts on RedNote?
Marketing agency WalkTheChat says a post's performance depends heavily on search volume and engagement, and that keywords in the post title are important. Writing titles around the questions people actually search is the sensible place to start.