What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future - Wait, TikTok Has a Sister App?
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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 April 2023
⏱️ 24 minutes
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Summary
While TikTok’s parent company, Bytedance, is fighting to keep its flagship app from being banned in the United States, it’s also pushing a new app into the marketplace—Lemon8. One part Pinterest, one part Instagram and a dash of its sister app, Lemon8 is most likely saddled with the same security concerns that led lawmakers to consider banning TikTok.
Guest: Sapna Maheshwari, business reporter for the New York Times.
Host: Lizzie O’Leary
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | My name is Nigel Monique, and I do everything. |
| 0:09.2 | Nijia's a lifestyle content creator. |
| 0:11.7 | She does digital marketing and event planning and hosts her on podcast. |
| 0:15.8 | She's 32, lives in Atlanta. |
| 0:18.2 | And recently, she was scrolling on TikTok and came across a woman talking about a different app, |
| 0:24.2 | an app called Lemonate. |
| 0:26.0 | And there was a creator on there. |
| 0:27.1 | She was talking about how much she loved the app. |
| 0:29.7 | And I mean, she didn't even finish the video. |
| 0:31.3 | Like, I ex out of the TikTok, |
| 0:32.8 | I went over to the app store, and I downloaded it. |
| 0:35.4 | I made my profile. |
| 0:36.5 | And as soon as I started scrolling, I was like, this is the app store and I downloaded it. I made my profile. And as soon as I started scrolling, |
| 0:37.9 | I was like, this is the app. For Nijia, Lemon 8 feels perfect, combining what she loves about other |
| 0:48.1 | apps. I would describe Lemon 8 as a Pinterest layout with an Instagram community with TikTok's artistic or like |
| 1:01.0 | creative template. |
| 1:02.9 | Visually, Lemon8 looks a bit like TikTok, but with two columns on the landing screen for |
| 1:08.2 | images and a lot more room for text. |
| 1:11.9 | And just like TikTok, |
| 1:16.1 | Lemonate's algorithm seems to quickly serve users what they want. |
| 1:21.9 | If I like two or three posts from a black content creator, then my 4U page now begins to generate more black content creators for me to find that, you know, are showing the things |
| 1:26.2 | that I want to see. |
... |
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