Moving towards universal integration, Xiaohongshu, please hand over the top list of “20 million” first

Wen| Yiyu Observation Thick Code 

A cold piece of knowledge, Xiaohongshu still has no 20 million fan bloggers.

Twelve years after its birth, Xiaohongshu has gradually upgraded from an original travel guide to a national grass planting machine, but has never produced a representative top-class blogger. This is like missing the final stroke in the finishing touch. The absence of the top class of Xiaohongshu is always missing something.

Even if it is the sound of iron chatter and the top flow of flowing water, in a certain period of time, it is still representative brothers and sisters who sent the chatter to the national App: Liu Genghong’s national jumping exercise, Brother Xiao Yang’s national spoof, Tingquan’s national treasure… Among them, it only took three years for Brother Xiao Yang to go from 10,000 fans to 100 million fans, while Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui, who have the highest promotion of Xiaohongshu, currently only have 4.3 million and 2.17 million.

Screenshot of Dong Jie and Zhang Xiaohui’s Xiaohongshu page

Up to now, with repeated reports of capitalization and large-scale entry into e-commerce, Xiaohongshu’s ambition to go to the whole people has been fully released. Yiyu Observation (ID: yiyuguancha) published “Ten Small Goals for Xiaohongshu 2025: Benchmarking Douyin, it’s going to fight!” In the article, it was discussed that Xiaohongshu’s goal is to get out of the growth arc of benchmarking Douyin. Then, just as Douyin continues to create top-stream Internet celebrities and gradually makes them successfully become a national application APP, Xiaohongshu’s path to the whole people is naturally inseparable from the top-stream effect.

However, for Xiaohongshu, an all-inclusive encyclopedia, the milestone threshold of 20 million is still ahead, just as Yiyuguancha (ID: yiyuguancha) analyzed Xiaohongshu’s star-making dilemma in the article “Xiaohongshu Urgent Waiting for 20 Million” two years ago. Two years later, Xiaohongshu, who is even more powerful and breaking the circle, is still facing this dilemma. Who can break through 20 million is still unresolved.

01 Portrait of the top stream: The separation of stars and bloggers from princes”

Perhaps at the beginning, the fact that Little Red Book did not have a top notch was engraved in its DNA.

Dating back to the birth of Xiaohongshu’s first leading blogger, it was Fan Bingbing’s arrival in 2017.

At the beginning of her stay, Fan Bingbing was to pave the way for promoting the personal skin care brand FANBEAUTY, but she unexpectedly became the queen of goods and became the first blogger of Xiaohongshu with more than 10 million fans.

Fan Bingbing’s video screenshot

On Fan Bingbing’s Xiaohongshu account, there are two distinct labels: star + beauty. Stars can be extended to the 2018 Xiaohongshu sponsored two talent shows “Idol Trainees” and “Creation 101”, inviting trainees to join Xiaohongshu’s arrival and release trends have shaped Xiaohongshu’s star-chasing atmosphere; Beauty is the natural rule of female users of Xiaohongshu, and beauty bloggers such as Cheng Shian and Luo Wangyu have gradually emerged.

At this point, Xiaohongshu Top Stream has vaguely had a portrait template.

One category is stars who bring their own traffic.

Currently, 5 of the top 10 accounts with Xiaohongshu fans are celebrities, namely Zhao Lusi, Fan Bingbing, Yu Shuxin, Lin Yun and Bai Jingting. Among them, Zhao Lusi ranks first in Xiaohongshu’s number of fans, reaching 18.53 million.

Among the five stars, some carry their own brand promotion tasks, some love to share beauty and wear, and some will actively promote new dramas when they are launched. This is similar to the popularity trend of other stars in Little Red Book, many of whom have gained popularity during the hit drama period.

Xiaohongshu also intends to strengthen celebrity promotion. The official account superstar Shu mentioned that the biggest achievement is to get celebrities ‘circles of friends, using the topicality of celebrities to convert it into platform traffic exposure and user growth.

Zhao Lusi’s 18.53 million is the one closest to 20 million. Two years ago, Zhao Lusi’s number of fans reached 15.5 million, but now her fans have increased by more than 3 million. During this period, Zhao Lusi has many hit dramas such as “Secretly Can’t Hide” and “Pearl Curtain and Jade Screen”, and maintains a high operating frequency of Xiaohongshu. Whether Xiaohongshu can be cruel enough to allow Zhao Lusi to break through 20 million and remain at the top of Xiaohongshu is also urgently needed for her.

Screenshot of Zhao Lusi’s Xiaohongshu

The other category is vertical bloggers in different fields.

Beauty and clothing are the two major advantageous categories that Xiaohongshu first entered the user’s field of vision. Beauty is still Xiaohongshu’s traffic password and fan growth keyword.

Data from the new list shows that beauty and wear accounts will still maintain a stable trend of increasing fans in 2024, with at least 10 accounts with an annual increase of more than one million fans. However, with the increasingly fierce competition in the beauty field in the past two years, it is difficult for new top celebrities to emerge in the beauty field of Xiaohongshu.

In contrast, pan-life content is captured in Xiaohongshu, which includes a mixture of content types such as plot, comedy, and vlog. Currently, among the top 100 accounts with Xiaohongshu fans, 34 bloggers focus on pan-life content, surpassing the 11 beauty bloggers and the 3 dress bloggers.

Most of these pan-life content is a strategy distributed across the Internet. For example, the Seven Orangutans, who once again became popular with the video series of “IReborn as a nanny in the Boss short drama, gained a cumulative number of fans in Xiaohongshu in the first half of 2024 alone. More than 1.7 million, he is also the personal blogger with the most fans during the same period.

“Reborn: I am still working as a nanny in the boss short drama

Pan-life content has always been a popular player on various platforms, and is also inseparable from Xiaohongshu’s main video push. Many pan-life content is presented in the form of Short Video. Coupled with the recent revision of Xiaohongshu’s video playback interface, the likes button has been moved from the bottom to the right, similar to the Douyin page, making some netizens lament that they cannot tell whether they are swiping Xiaohongshu or Douyin.

On the one hand, there are stars with their own characteristics, and on the other hand, there are vertical bloggers in different fields, making it difficult for Xiaohongshu to find a top class with the greatest common denominator. It gradually formed a scene of feudal separatism. They have extremely strong cohesion in their respective fields, but they may not be able to satisfy the hard-to-adjust public opinion.

02 The threshold of 20 million is difficult to break: success or failure depends on decentralization”

Decentralization is a major feature that makes Xiaohongshu unique to other content platforms. There are even rumors in the industry that Xiaohongshu allocates more than 50% of its traffic to ordinary users with less than 1,000 fans every day.

Under this operation, the most obvious manifestation is that there is no single company that dominates the world, and it has also led more ordinary users to join the creation of Xiaohongshu.

In contrast, Douyin allocates more than 80% of its traffic to creators with more than 10,000 fans. Therefore, most of the videos appearing in the Douyin recommendation stream are popular videos that already have high likes, while Xiaohongshu often appears in amateur notes with few likes. When amateur notes unexpectedly become popular, the most common chain reaction is that amateur users lament that they don’t know why the note exploded.

Xiaohongshu screenshot

Xiaohongshu has always emphasized that it is a community of acquaintances, with equal rights at its core, allowing users to interact with each other, thus forming an interconnected network.

This network does not present an obvious central node, and everyone can speak freely equally in the community. When there are new changes in this community, the focus of the network will also shift.

During the TikTok refugee period at the beginning of this year, Xiaohongshu’s popular notes and fan accounts were mostly foreigners. They did not need to export beautiful photos or vlogs. Even a selfie with a simple hello in Chinese, you can easily win tens of thousands of likes and fans. However, when the freshness faded and the community quickly returned to calm, Xiao Hongshu had no intention of using an invisible hand to hold out an artificial foreign celebrity.

TikTok refugee tide on Little Red Book at the beginning of the year”

This platform logic with inaction echoes why Xiaohongshu has so far difficulty breaking the 20 million threshold.

So far, there are only 7 accounts in Xiaohongshu Station that have more than 10 million followers, including Xiaohongshu’s official account manager. There are not many accounts with more than 5 million followers, only 43. To a certain extent, the restraint of Xiaohongshu and WeChat are similar. Users are all living in their own information cocoons and are not interested in other enthusiasts.

Decentralization has brought Xiaohongshu an atmosphere of community residents ‘autonomy, and has also allowed bloggers to miss the opportunity to quickly increase their fans in a short period of time. Algorithms prefer content over people, and users are accustomed to the search-like, collect-exit approach to consume content rather than focusing on the creator himself.

A note that has 10,000 likes in Xiaohongshu can usually be called a hit, but the bonus it brings to bloggers is limited. If it has 100,000 fans in a week, it is considered eye-catching.

Blogger @ Sister Olga’s live broadcast gained 200,000 fans in 4 months

With such progress, there is a big gap compared to Douyin’s increase in fans by millions or even tens of millions in a week. Coupled with the changes in hot spots and decentralized traffic distribution, it is difficult for the same blogger to continue to increase fans.

Over time, the threshold of 20 million yuan cannot be crossed overnight.

03 Does Xiaohongshu need 20 million yuan?”

Brother Xiao Yang spent 3 years on going from 10,000 fans to exceeding 100 million fans. He was also the first personal blogger in Douyin to have more than 100 million fans; Simba and Dan, who are fast-moving, both have more than 100 million fans; even Station B, which continues to break the circle from secondary yuan intentions, has @ Luo Xiang said that the number of criminal law fans reaches 31.53 million.

On Xiaohongshu, even 20 million people don’t know when they will see the light.

From the news of listing in Hong Kong to access to AI search, the Little Red Book will continue to move forward after entering 2025.

Little Red Book incubates AI search application Diandian App

As of mid-2024, Xiaohongshu has 320 million monthly active users and 120 million daily active users. With hundreds of millions of users, Xiaohongshu has gradually aligned itself with Douyin and the whole people.

The proportion of high-value users in Xiaohongshu’s overall users is also outstanding.

In October 2024, QuestMobile data showed that the total number of high-value users on the entire network was approximately 238 million, and the number of high-value users of Douyin, Weibo, Xiaohongshu, Fast Hand, and Beili Beili were 165 million, 156 million, 88 million, 70 million, and 70 million respectively. However, the distribution of these high-value users in Little Red Book is not concentrated, and can even be described as scattered stars in the sky.

Source: QuestMobile

There is a saying in the industry that the least important indicator on Little Red Book is the number of fans, and closing a transaction is the first goal. For example, Dong Jie’s Xiaohongshu followers are 4.3 million, and Zhang Xiaohui has 2.17 million. Although it is less than 20 million yuan, few brands will question their ability to bring goods.

But the embarrassing question also lies ahead. Xiaohongshu wants the two bloggers they are proud of to continue to set GMV records, but these two now have to face the embarrassment of whether they can hold on to their country after increasing their fans. After all, every anchor who creates miracles does not stop at the number of fans without growth. So, does Little Red Book really need 20 million yuan? There are two perspectives worth thinking about.

The first is whether Xiaohongshu can find a story suitable for telling the whole people.

This story can be what Li Jiaqi is unique to Taobao, or it can be Simba’s rich family culture to Fast Hand.

Li Jiaqi Live Broadcast Room Taobao 38 Promotions

In Xiaohongshu, this story has a kaleidoscope of diversity. It can be a pioneer in beauty and wear, and it is also a growing pan-life content.

The original story of Xiaohongshu was to highlight the taste of life, but it was also easy to attract criticism from the spread of consumerism. This is not suitable for the whole people, just like Zhao Lusi, who now has the largest fan of Xiaohongshu, also has a different discussion voice on the station.

The second is whether Xiao Hongshu will be a celebrity or a talent next.

Fan Bingbing, the first generation of Xiaohong Booktop, had both the characteristics of a star and a talent. She was both a female star with a sense of distance and a grass grower who shared her daily favorite things. This combination allows Xiaohongshu to see more possibilities for top performers.

Bai Jingting and joint venture brand GOODBAI

As users gradually become desensitized to the story of planting grass that love using good things, the so-called true recommendations by stars have also been discounted, and users have turned to the arms of talented people and even ordinary amateurs, which instead symbolizes a kind of reality. If this continues, the top-flow effect of Little Red Book will be more dispersed, and everyone is the king in their respective fields, so naturally there will be no so-called king.

Xiaohongshu may have never really longed for a superstar with 20 million fans, which means turning the carefully maintained museum of life into a traffic arena. However, when their opponents have cultivated one national superstar after another, they are stuck at the threshold of 20 million. The top celebrities of Xiaohongshu are becoming the most embarrassing footnote in the community’s strategic hesitation period.

The key is that Xiaohongshu can concentrate on staying in one corner and be small and beautiful, but its current ambitions do not stop there. It is going to be universal and turned into a public discussion forum. Then, Xiaohongshu’s thoughts on whether to create a top class should change. Behind the decision, we also return to the discussion of the essence of the Little Red Book. Is it an ideal country without superstars or a Tower of Babel that has lost its uniqueness but has greater commercial imagination? Xiao Hongshu is still in this dangerous balance game.