When Slogan changed from a “guide” to an “interest community”, Xiaohongshu officially declared that it wanted not only a content empire, but a multiverse with people as nodes – at the critical point of 100 million daily active users, it chose to expand its capacity with “life interests” and suck each niche circle into the same infinitely extended social star map, becoming a “community of communities”.
Xiaohongshu should be a collection of people, not a collection of content.
On July 8, Xiaohongshu changed its slogan, from “Your Life Guide” to “Your Life Interest Community”.
From “finding good things abroad” when it was launched in 2013, to “good things in the world” when it made an APP in 2015, to “good life around the world” when it was transformed into a community in 2017, and then upgraded to “mark my life” in 2018 – at this time, Xiaohongshu really went out of the circle, sponsoring “Youth with You” and “Creation 101”, and a lot of new users poured in. During the epidemic in 2022, it became “Your Life Guide”, and this slogan is particularly suitable for everyone’s perception of Xiaohongshu at that stage – for ordinary users, Xiaohongshu is a very good search engine with a lot of life experience to share. Until this time, the “Community of Your Life Interests” in 2025.
For the main product, changing the slogan is a very important thing, and it must be discussed many times by the core management before it can be finalized.
This adjustment can be viewed from two levels: First of all, it is explained internally that Xiaohongshu is actually a community. Because Xiaohongshu is getting bigger and bigger, with more than 100 million daily users, there may be many people from Byte, Kuaishou, and Alibaba, and everyone will naturally think that we are already so big and want to do platform things, such as “supplying on a large scale, motivating creators, spending money to subsidize, and then taking everyone – but not as a member of these communities, but more as a number to look at the scale.” “But the community naturally has anti-scale effects, parts that need to pay attention to people, and parts that can’t just look at numbers. So this slogan is first of all to align with the internal – Xiaohongshu is a community, not a platform.
What is the difference between a community and a content platform? If it is a content platform, it must be large-scale content supply, build a matching between consumption and supply, spend money on subsidies, pull more daily activities, and look at scale and data. But community is naturally an anti-scale thing, especially for the relationship between ends and means. A few years ago, Chen Rui was asked in a late interview, “Just imagine letting ByteDance do Station B?” He may give UP owners a large subsidy plan to make the information flow on the homepage more addictive, and then insert advertisements to sell. The most important thing is that if he only has a sum of money from the beginning, and then smashes a mass content and a group of niche content that two-dimensional users like, he may not hesitate to choose the former. ”
Assuming that Xiaohongshu still wants to achieve 300 million daily active users, then what should I do now to make my community carry more users to serve 300 million daily active users, instead of the other way around I want to serve 300 million users, what should I do? That is, your end cannot replace the means, and the means cannot replace the end, although the two are similar in terms of results, but your path and the quality of your final result are completely different.
In addition, shout to outside users, especially non-core users. In the community, the core users themselves already have a very high depth and their own habits in the use of products, and what is Xiaohongshu in their minds, in fact, has its own answer. Non-core users are the groups that have not yet come and will come in the future. In the past, Xiaohongshu did emphasize usefulness when talking about your life guide, but now it is trying to use a broader definition and a wider scope to attract these non-core users who originally did not have good services. At the same time, it is also emphasized that the core of Xiaohongshu must be “community”, I am not a content platform, I am not Douyin, I am not Toutiao, I am not Zhihu, but because the word community is too big, I need to add a prefix in front – I am a “life interest” community.
With a volume of more than 100 million users, Xiaohongshu still insists on calling itself a “community”, which is almost unique in the Internet world. After reaching this scale, most platforms will naturally evolve into “platforms” – opening doors to do business and connecting both ends of BC. But Xiaohongshu is different, it chooses a more difficult path: make choices, have value propositions, and maintain a unique community atmosphere. For example, Xiaohongshu has drawn boundaries for itself through the four words “sincere sharing” – what you want and what you don’t want. This adherence to this value proposition is key to the community’s ability to maintain its uniqueness as it scales.
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Starting from Xiaohongshu’s slogan update, we invited several experts who have in-depth thinking about community products to discuss these issues together. From the overseas shopping tool in 2013 to today’s life interest community, what kind of transformation has Xiaohongshu undergone? What does it mean when we talk about “living interest communities” rather than “content platforms”? and the living space of vertical communities in the era of large platforms, and whether Xiaohongshu may also become a community of communities.
Here are some of the core discussion minutes:
From “useful” to “interest”: the shift in creative motivation
Teacher Wang Hongzhe works in colleges and universities, and in his observation, almost everyone in the post-00s generation of urban college students uses Xiaohongshu. This is an important display platform for them, and the frequency and value of display have exceeded the WeChat circle of friends for many children, who prefer to be able to show it to strangers. He himself has also used Xiaohongshu to find a travel partner on his last two trips, and the last time he met netizens on the Internet may be traced back to more than ten years ago.
In the last cycle, most of the new users used Xiaohongshu because they used it as a search tool. But it definitely has to convert, you have to change from a search user to a swiping user, and then you from a swiping user to a commenting user, and from a commenting user to a continuous posting user. This is the product evolution path from edge users to deep users, and then to community core users.
Zhang Zhuo feels that interest is the trigger and pass of all connections in Xiaohongshu, and people come to Xiaohongshu because of interest, but not because of life itself. To explain specifically, it will be because of things like where to go on weekends, how to raise a ragdoll cat, or like Teacher Wang said that traveling is also an interest, it will plunge headfirst. Interest is the hook, pulling people who don’t know each other scattered all over the world to the community of Xiaohongshu. The community is indeed different from the content platform, the community still has identity and connection attributes, because of interest, so everyone is connected. It is indeed not planned, it is growing, just like Xiaohongshu has always said, it wants to grow, not grow. When you are immersed in a community full of common interests for a long time, the aesthetic values and lifestyle of this community will affect us to a greater or lesser extent and ultimately shape our lives. Therefore, she ranks the three words of interest, life, community, interest is first, community is second, and life is third.
When Xiaohongshu’s slogan changes from “your life guide” to “your life interest community”, it seems to sound like it is going to go from being useful to not necessarily useful, maybe to pursue more interests and experiences. Zhang Zhuo believes that not everyone can post useful content, and not everyone can post informative content. Maybe Xiaohongshu wants users to post it as a circle of friends, you can post all the emotional expressions you think are personalized, as well as your experience, maybe it is useless at all. You can see a cloud and you can also send it, and you can send it when you see something fun on the road. Even some of your failure experiences, because now Xiaohongshu has many posts about how you failed, and that thing has no guidelines. He expressed his feelings around his age, or some things that were not very happy, maybe only a few paragraphs, but you will see that there are many people in the comment area below, and even people will exchange their memory experiences, some people will comfort each other, and maybe the two people in the comment area will form comfort.
From usefulness to interest, in essence, he still wants to continue to broaden the group of creators, because not everyone can really post guides. Now Xiaohongshu is more inclined to do this kind of distribution better, so that people can form an emotional connection in this community, which is very scarce in today’s society.
When Xiaohongshu changed from practicality to interest, Liu Fei observed an interesting phenomenon: if it was a practical guide before, then when we send notes, we will think “this note is really writing down something to help others”. At this time, as a creator and poster, there will be psychological pressure or psychological presuppositions – “Can I help others?” Will others collect it after reading it? ”
Even a large number of people who shared their notes on Xiaohongshu at that time still had the idea of “I want to be an account”, be a self-media, be an Internet celebrity, and have an influence in their hearts. But then you will find that some people really don’t have many likes, and they don’t want to have any commercialization in Xiaohongshu or make any money in the future, but they are very willing to post. Why? Because he can meet many friends on it. This is actually the extension of interest, and everyone has a new scene. At this time, many users will turn the posting of Xiaohongshu into a state of posting Moments. This subtle difference makes a lot of very fine and long-tailed content appear.
The year before last, Liu Fei traveled to the Philippines, and he had to transfer at a very small airport, and the transfer time was not sufficient, he did not know the situation at that airport at all, and there was no official website, and there was no specific transfer information to refer to. He has searched everywhere in the entire Chinese Internet world, and only a few friends in Xiaohongshu who have also transferred at that airport have shared it. But there are not many likes on the post, and the comment area below is basically friends who have transited at that airport to communicate. The friend who sent the note was not for much influence or future money, but he also encountered a turnaround problem at that time, which was worse, but it was solved. “I really want to send it out, maybe it can help others, and I’m very happy if I can’t help others send it out.”
Previously, “Mark My Life” and “Your Life Guide” actually emphasized structured feelings. But today we see that last year Xiaohongshu held a literary competition, in which a post-00s girl was writing eulogies to strangers, and she often occasionally brushed some in Xiaohongshu, which may be the only child of the post-80s generation facing the death of her parents, in which she recorded her living conditions and nostalgia for the past, as well as her own feelings at that time. They are not all going in the direction of usefulness, but more of a record of everyone’s lives, not even experience, not useful experience for others, but my own life experience – a vivid one-handed, or a tragic experience. Record their daily lives, some feelings may not be useful to others.
In the future, we will see more things related to ourselves in the Xiaohongshu community, which may be related to our hearts, the meaning of our lives, and our connections with others and the world, but not more pure “I must be useful to others”.
Community expansion: Xiaohongshu is a collection of people, not a collection of content
Three dimensions of expansion
- Content expansion: From “useful” to “not necessarily useful”, from strategies, assessments, tutorials to more entertainment and expressive content.
- Crowd expansion: from elite users who pursue life to ordinary users who are interested.
- Scene expansion: From specific life scenarios (shopping, travel, beauty) to full interest coverage.
Xiaohongshu used to be very good at vertical operations – camping, frisbee, City Walk. This kind of operation is very precise and has high user stickiness, but the scale is limited. No matter how good frisbee is, it is not as influential as a popular topic like Su Chao. But topics like Su Chao have brought new challenges – how to deal with the relationship between popular content and niche interests? How to make both soccer and beauty users feel comfortable on the same platform?
Zhang Zhuo shared an important point she learned from Xiaohongshu: the key to expansion is whether the newly expanded content can include the previous content. If it cannot be included, this expansion is in the wrong direction; If it can be included, it means that this expansion is very smooth.
Xiaohongshu’s expansion path proves this logic very well: at the beginning, it taught you to buy things better, and then expanded to become more beautiful (beauty or dressing), in fact, becoming more beautiful can include buying things. Then it becomes “Mark Your Life”, which actually makes your life better, and can also be expanded to the first two slogans. Including the current interest community, you can actually put the front bread in.
Therefore, the expansion of Xiaohongshu has always been pushed forward, rather than saying that the Hupu community suddenly wants to do beauty, which cannot be deduced.
Xiaohongshu’s internal operation method is called “one horizontal, one vertical and up and down”, vertical refers to mining the core needs of users, horizontal is to judge trends on the timeline, and up and down is to consider the differences in city levels.
When you find an interest that is particularly popular in Xiaohongshu, such as Su Chao, camping, rock climbing, etc., the vertical is to explore this type of group of people in this interest and understand what their core needs are. For example, do people who go to the Su Super League really like to watch football? Many Xiaohongshu bloggers may usually cook or open clothing stores, and Su Chao also went, so what is behind him? What is the appeal behind the climber? He must not be climbing itself, he must have the most basic appeal of a person. So they will choose this group of users in the vertical direction to understand what their core needs are.
The horizontal logic is that they will stand, for example, in three years, this rock climbing or camping or Su Chao is still popular? If it can continue to be a way of life, or a trend, they will take the initiative to operate. If they feel that this is not a trend in three years, they may be more cautious. So this horizontal is to stand on the timeline to see the current point of interest, whether it will become a major point of interest in the future, or a popular trend.
Exploring up and down means that because first-tier cities and fourth- and fifth-tier cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, may have differences in points of interest. Also searching for weekend travel, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou may be camping, rock climbing or hiking, but people in fourth- and fifth-tier cities may go to parks. So they will also see this interest when they go up and down, if it falls in other cities, such as some cities that are more sinking, what will these interests become? Just like when they started the frisbee activity, it was first discovered in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, and later found that there were actually many people in sinking cities who liked to play frisbee.
The expansion of Xiaohongshu, one is to see if the back can cover the front, and the second is that when choosing a different interest, they will dig up the essential needs, rather than just looking at the surface. So can Su Chao and rock climbing and camping be together? Obviously, it is possible, because the essential demands are sometimes similar. Maybe Su Chao’s classmates just like to join in the fun, or go to some group sports, then he may also like it, such as playing script killing, or camping and rock climbing, or maybe he likes to play frisbee. Then they discover that the mechanism may open up these circles without causing contradictions.
The development trajectory of Xiaohongshu clearly shows this expansion logic: from the initial sharing of outbound travel journeys, to what is worth buying, and then to what restaurants and hotels are worth visiting. After doing a good job in product/shopping content, Xiaohongshu began to generalize the content, from shopping generalization to eating, drinking and playing, defining it as a lifestyle platform and becoming a grass planting artifact. On the road to transforming from a shopping community to a lifestyle community, Xiaohongshu began to contain a lot of low-frequency content, such as travel, through bloggers to balance various users and categories, and use diversified content and users to string many low-frequency scenes in one place.
Xiaohongshu is a collection of people, not a collection of content. Lifestyle is not food, clothing, housing, transportation, buying, buying, buying, Xiaohongshu gathers these people here through the product form of the life interest community. Because the content of Xiaohongshu is organized in the form of people, people will have all kinds of needs. They may come from a need, but they slowly move all aspects of their lives from offline to online, breaking the vertical boundaries.
Communities of vertical communities and communities
Today, we see that the products of Mafengwo, Stay Well, and Hupu Tieba have faced various problems in the past: aging users, declining activity, and difficulties in commercialization. In this context, is it possible for Xiaohongshu to become a “community of communities”?
Liu Fei believes that many vertical communities are facing the crisis of being re-washed or transformed by Xiaohongshu. The core logic behind it is that Xiaohongshu has a good product carrying capacity. The graphic structure of Xiaohongshu has not changed for many years, and it is very important to be able to insist on using the same structure to carry different demands or different scenarios. All kinds of vertical scenes can basically be carried by graphics and text.
Many male users are unlikely to convert to Xiaohongshu through beauty at first, but through home or travel. For example, read the Thailand guides recommended by female friends around you, slowly start to search for travel guides on Xiaohongshu, or share some things about travel. When you convert it, Xiaohongshu can allow users to expand naturally through operational means. Because people are here, they only watch travel at first, but later they can watch music, vinyl, basketball, football, sports, digital, and games.
This is similar to the siphon effect, just like the traffic black hole that exists in other products on the Internet, it will constantly suck people’s needs through people – there is only one need to meet with you, but it will meet all related needs with you.
Regarding the real-life cases of vertical communities being encroached upon, Zhang Zhuo observed three phenomena:
- OC (original character) is the fastest growing track in Xiaohongshu this year, and many OC communities have lost a large number of users as a result, and OC users have turned to Xiaohongshu to post and create.
- After the popularity of Su Chao, Xiaohongshu quickly set up a football track and divided it into a football section in the sports section.
- The vertical APP was directly impacted, Zhang Zhuo’s friends made vertical APPs, because of the emergence of Xiaohongshu, advertising revenue died by 50%, and all customers in the vertical track voted for Xiaohongshu.
There is no need for vertical communities to appear in commercialization, and users have no way to download a community to meet special demands.
Shen Zhenyu, the founder of Qiandao, put forward an important point: in the past five to seven years, in fact, it has been a process of vertical categories being encroached upon by major platforms. Many vertical categories are quietly submerged when the big platform itself has no feeling. For example, the decline of Weipaitang, a cultural and playful jade trading platform, was once a star company in the WeChat ecosystem, but because of the rise of Douyin live broadcast, the owner of the cultural play store who originally opened a store in Weipaitang found that he could get more buyer traffic on Douyin live broadcast, and the traffic efficiency far exceeded that of Weipaitang, and the basic trading functions were also available, so the platform declined. If everything that this platform does can be done by a big platform, then the existence of vertical communities is not very meaningful.
Today, many heavy enthusiasts with vertical interests, and people in many circles have begun to post notes on Xiaohongshu, and are even more active than the vertical community they originally belonged to.
But Shen Zhenyu also believes that it is impossible for a large platform to do everything, and it is impossible to break the core pain points of each vertical category one by one. Because each interest has a huge differentiation, you can’t expect to solve all your interests and hobbies just by doing one function. There is no silver bullet in the matter of interest, and there is no way to solve all problems. Moreover, the root cause of the difference between brand and product is the difference in user mind, and each platform can only form one user mentality in the end. No matter how big the platform is, it always has to summarize what it gives users in one sentence, and the user’s memory and understanding of the brand is very simple and crude, and we have never seen a platform that occupies any mind.
Xiaohongshu’s success lies in finding a balance: being a collection of people that can carry a wide enough range of content types while maintaining a sense of community connection. But as the community expands, how to strike a balance between breadth and depth to meet the needs of heavy enthusiasts will be an ongoing challenge.
