To directly answer the question, Rednote is not generally used outside China, and the point about these apps being representative of "global" social media apps is false.

RedNote was #1 on the App Store download list for a couple of days.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/chinese-app-rednote-hits-1-i...

So was this app at one point in time: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/9/21058399/david-dobrik-disp...

It's called Dispo. You probably haven't heard of it because it became almost irrelevant a few weeks after launch. #1 on the app store doesn't mean a whole lot.

RedNote is a bit different: it has been wildly popular in China for a number of years, and the Chinese community has been using it overseas already.

It may not retain all the new users, but it is not going to become irrelevant.

I agree. But I'm just saying that #1 on the app store doesn't preclude something from being a fad and my guess is that in 1 month's time, no one is going to be talking about RedNote outside of Chinese communities.

That’s an extremely recent development caused by the TT shutdown looming.

How many of those downloads originated in China? Genuine question, I read the article and it doesn't say. Apple's App Store is available in China, and China's population alone could be skewing those numbers.

App store top apps are per-region. And China one likely even running on completely different infrastructure because CCP.

Yes it's called a meme and it won't last.

It received some popularity among TikTok refugees from the US and subsequently also from around the world by users who got curios about what the fuzz was all about.

Xiaohongshu is used by a lot of huaqiao outside of China. It has a sizeable overseas userbase, but it also has 300M total users.

To their point, almost exclusively Chinese overseas until the recent memeing.

Which is honestly weird. It's Little Red Book, not Red Note, in reference to Mao's little red book.

"Little Red Book" doesn't resonate with people outside China