Scroll through TikTok long enough and you’ll find a bright yellow banner flashing in between dance videos and recipe hacks. A carousel opens to what looks like a digital scrapbook of a Gen Z's weekend.
Fashion flatlays share space with overhead shots of fancy brunches and narrow staircases leading to speakeasies. The slides later zoom into tags on a blazer, stall numbers on signboards, or Google Maps screenshots cropped on back‑lane entrances. The whole sequence reads like a route you could follow outfit by outfit, stop by stop, much like a swipeable stack of aspirational how‑tos.
This is how many users often discover Lemon8, a social platform built for lifestyle inspiration. While TikTok still dominates marketing budgets and consumer attention, Lemon8 is evolving into a lower‑funnel, intent‑driven playground where SMEs, beauty labels, and hospitality players can win with niche content that would get buried elsewhere online.
Lemon8 was launched by ByteDance as a global analogue to the Chinese lifestyle‑commerce platform, Xiaohongshu, in 2020. Its growth has piggybacked heavily on TikTok’s scale. As of March 2025, Lemon8 has surpassed 50 million installs globally across iOS and Android, with over 16 million monthly active users worldwide. In addition to the US, Thailand is currently one of its strongest markets in APAC, alongside growing user bases in Southeast Asia, such as Indonesia.
“This naturally piqued client interest, with some brands interested in the platform precisely because it's an emerging social app from ByteDance. These brands wanted to use it as a test-bed for digital marketing," says Nirote Chaweewannakorn, country director, Thailand at Gushcloud. He frames Lemon8 as a node in ByteDance’s campaign ecosystem, increasingly used by marketers targeting specific demographics: women, Gen Z and young millennials with disposable income and a taste for highly curated inspiration.
While Lemon8 is unlikely to repeat TikTok’s pandemic‑era breakout, the app appears to carve out space as a specialist platform alongside Pinterest and Xiaohongshu.
“Lemon8 is an editorial kind of platform where people look for advice, tips, and specific information,” says Benedict Yeo, founder of Singapore‑based agency Addpetizer, adding: “Users are in a problem‑solving mode. That's something that is unique about Lemon8 compared to the other platforms."
An intentional algorithm
Unlike Instagram, where you stumble across content from people you already follow, Lemon8 is all about curating individual aesthetics and lifestyle, and functions more like a search engine that hones in on consumer interests.
“The users tend to be more purpose-driven,” says Kristen Leaman, founder of indie agency Indie Collaborates. “Even before they set up an account, they have to fill in what categories they are interested in. For brands and creators alike, it's very much about keywords.”
That dynamic shapes everything from content formats to measurement. Users search a combination of specific keywords—“Tokyo date night,” “PCOS skincare routine,” or “capsule wardrobe for hot weather,”—to discover relevant content.
“Posts need to look like what a magazine looks like on a shelf,” says Leaman. “It needs to have a headline that gets attention, some context on the value of that piece of content, and a short caption that tells you what that is. It has to be clickable.”
For agencies actively running campaigns on the platform, that intent is tied closely to how the algorithm treats reach. On Lemon8, creator followers are typically not tied to reach, unlike on platforms like Instagram. Yeo observes: "You can go viral even though you have one follower, even with your first post. On most platforms, you require some level of following, say a few thousand followers, but that’s not the case with Lemon8.”
Leaman echoes this sentiment, noting that users are looking for specific queries and not necessarily popular posts or macrotrends. She explains: “It’s actually quite hard to grow followers on Lemon8. You don’t look at numbers the way you do other platforms—for brands, many look at the post saves when measuring engagement in campaigns.”
Why SMEs and lifestyle brands thrive on Lemon8
As Lemon8’s demographics skew young and female, Gen Z and millennials dominate its user base, with lifestyle categories—beauty, fashion, food, travel—leading the way. In Thailand, over 60% of users are female, prompting skincare and beauty brands to be the earliest adopters of the platform.
Yeo reports a similar profile in Singapore, adding: “You don’t really get many Gen X users and above." This demographic profile favours brands that aren't mass market, with exceptions in the cosmetics space. Legacy brands like Colgate have seen success on the platform, said Leaman, whose agency piloted several 'before-and-after' campaigns for the brand.
Still, Leaman notes Lemon8 may be better suited to SMEs and niche products than to blue‑chip FMCGs, at least in its current state. She believes that startup or independent businesses may see the biggest upside as the platform has yet to be crowded with brands with much bigger marketing budgets.
Chaweewannakorn agrees: "In terms of efficiency, the interest‑based algorithm benefits emerging brands too, as they don’t necessarily need to engage with big content creators.”
Yeo points to a campaign his agency created for a local Singapore cafe as an early proof point. “We find it to be quite a blue ocean right now for brands,” he says.
Case in point, Addpetizer recently worked with Old Habits Cafe, a destination‑dining spot (see above). Instead of a standard one‑off post, Yeo invited creators whose feeds already revolved around cafes, vintage finds, and hidden gem experiences. Each creator was encouraged to shoot and write in their own voice. One framed it as an “antique cafe in Singapore,” another as a “nostalgia‑filled brunch spot,” while others slotted it into their running lists of date‑night ideas or weekend itineraries.
Yeo notes that it’s precisely this hands‑off approach that makes Lemon8 campaigns especially powerful for brands without strong name recognition. He adds: “That’s when the content feels like a recommendation rather than an ad."
The rise of the faceless nano-creator
If Instagram was built on aspirational macro‑influencers and TikTok elevated personality‑driven vertical videos, Lemon8’s creator economy looks different. Nano and micro creators dominate, and in some markets, creators do not even show their faces.
In Singapore, the Lemon8 team deliberately hunted for “normal, relatable people” with a strong sensibility rather than already established influencers, recalls Carissa Kong, a former creator partnerships manager who helped launch Lemon8 in Singapore.
"On Instagram they may have 2,000 followers, but you can tell there was a certain niche about them—maybe they liked posting about their clothes, maybe cafes. We gathered about 1,000 creators and groomed them into creating content on Lemon8,” she says, adding: “On Lemon8, you’re able to go viral without people knowing who you are."
Rather than chasing a single glossy macro‑influencer, Yeo observes that effective marketing on Lemon8 hones in on accounts whose feeds already revolve around niche experiences. These creators often don’t foreground their faces, and the product, place, and process takes centre stage instead. The emphasis is on peer-led, organic content.
“Every time these creators share a makeup routine or how they’re preparing for a concert, brands that are embedded into these posts build salience," he explains.
Kong has also seen how anonymity lowers the barrier for people who would never front‑face on platforms such as Instagram. This format lends itself naturally to content like lifestyle diaries, wardrobe breakdowns, and restaurant recommendations—made by everyday people for an audience looking for detailed, real-world information.
Leaman explains that Gen Z, in particular, is looking for detail‑heavy, experience‑led posts rather than polished persona pieces. This pushes marketers towards smaller creators whose feeds already read like diaries—skincare routines, restaurant runs, packing lists—rather than the obvious, mass market campaigns.
The long tail of small accounts is exactly where Lemon8’s advantage lies, especially for brands with modest budgets but still want targeted reach. This means a skincare label or cafe chain can tap dozens of tiny accounts clustered around a specific neighbourhood, skin concern, or style tribe and still get distribution through the algorithm.
Explainer‑aesthetic: what formats work
Lemon8’s biggest marketing asset is perceived authenticity. “From a Gen Z perspective, they’re all about real reviews,” says Leaman. But that trust comes with strict creative expectations. On Lemon8, a review usually consists of both pros and cons, not just polished benefits.
That is a harder sell for big, heavily managed brands. “It comes down to the fact that they’re hesitant,” she notes. “The problem with brands is it’s really hard for them to let go of their narrative. They’ve got strict guidelines, layers of management. If you can’t convince a creator to do exactly what you want—scream logos here and there—brands tend to steer away. They’re very protective of their brand.”
The platform is built specifically for content with a clear creative format. Posts that gain traction between both branded content and UGC are often carousels with text overlays and long captions with detailed reviews and recommendations. Leaman explains: “It’s not just about posting pretty aspirational pictures. It is about useful educational content: reviews, five steps to X, secrets, solutions that work.”
Those kinds of explainer‑aesthetic carousels—beauty diaries, travel itineraries, capsule wardrobe maps, cafe round‑ups—sit squarely between Pinterest moodboards and TikTok 'Get Ready with Me's work better than videos here. Yeo explains: “If you do listicles, that tends to perform well. Routines, too, especially in beauty. When you share a problem and solution—for example, if you’ve got eczema, you have to know this—users also gravitate towards that.”
And how is success judged on the platform? Yeo explains: “Ultimately, the easiest metrics we can always track are reach and engagement. For Lemon8, if you’re in the more mass‑market range of pricing, typically, I would say that the conversion rates are better. Still, one thing unique about the platform is the level of engagement. Users really ask questions. I think the conversation among users is something that’s unique to Lemon8.”
Where does Lemon8 go next?
Within the ByteDance ecosystem, the platform is more likely to settle into a supporting role, bolstering TikTok as part of an integrated campaign stack where high‑reach video drives discovery and awareness while Lemon8’s carousels capture research and conversion.
Chaweewannakorn is more cautious about breakout potential but sees clear utility on Lemon8 if ByteDance turns on stronger commerce features. “If they have a big-enough user base and enough content variation, then maybe it would get bigger traction,” he says. “Eventually, the platform could offer e‑commerce. For the lower funnel, brands can engage with 200 content creators at once to drive sales.”
On the buy‑side, Yeo is clear that Lemon8 cannot operate in a silo. He argues that in order for brands to build awareness and affinity with consumers, they need to be connecting with audiences on multiple platforms. Meanwhile, he remains cautious about Lemon8’s trajectory, noting that one of his key concerns is that the platform is not gaining the kind of traction you would expect from a dominant social media player. To him, the platform still feels tightly confined to a niche segment rather than scaling outward.
For Yeo, the next move sits squarely with ByteDance’s B2B play: “What’s needed for more growth and visibility is brand marketing to B2B audiences, so agencies can propose solutions with Lemon8.”
In addition to nano-creators, Lemon8 is built specifically for content with a clear creative format. Posts that gain traction between both branded content and UGC are often carousels with text overlays and long captions with detailed reviews and recommendations. Leaman explains: “It’s not just about posting pretty aspirational pictures. It is about useful educational content: reviews, five steps to X, secrets, solutions that work.”
Those kinds of “explainer‑aesthetic” carousels—beauty diaries, travel itineraries, capsule wardrobe maps, cafe round‑ups—sit squarely between Pinterest moodboards and TikTok 'Get Ready with Me's. For now, carousels outperform video, with a design-led still format that is native to the platform.
Some agencies have already reverse‑engineered house styles that work. Yeo explains: “If you do listicles, that tends to perform well. Routines, too, especially in beauty. When you share a problem and solution—for example, if you’ve got eczema, you have to know this—users also gravitate towards that.”
Source: Campaign Asia-Pacific
