With its unique female user advantages and the pursuit of high-quality content, Xiaohongshu has shown its ambition in the field of short dramas by launching high-quality short dramas such as “Foolish Love”.
At the same time, Hongguo relies on a strong free model, massive IP resources and accounting system to consolidate its position in the female frequency short drama market.
Behind this battle of “grabbing women” is not only the competition for the number of broadcasts, but also the competition for the minds of female users. In the second half of the short drama, the outcome may no longer depend on the traffic, but who can really touch the emotional resonance of female audiences.
Short dramas are becoming an inseparable “panacea” in the Chinese Internet world, and the “traffic upstart” Xiaohongshu naturally cannot be missed.
Before the start of this year’s Spring Festival, Xiaohongshu entered the battle of short dramas in advance – opening up the entrance to short dramas, providing 100 short dramas for free, and drawing gifts in a variety of operating methods, among which the short drama “Falling into the Spring Night” distributed by Fengmang was remarkably popular, winning the name for Xiaohongshu short dramas.
And by the middle of the year,Xiaohongshu’s short drama finally ushered in its own “second cannon fire” – an emotional short drama called “Foolish Love” became a hit on the siteTwo weeks after its launch, the drama had more than 70 million views on Xiaohongshu Station, and the number of discussions on related topics exceeded 200 million.
From the perspective of plot type, “Fool’s Love” deeply combines “stand-in literature” with suspense elements, which is different from common overlord short dramas. The 4K high-definition picture further highlights the high-quality route of Xiaohongshu short dramas, and the high praise messages in the comment area include “like a movie, not like a short drama”, and Xiaohongshu officials also shouted out the slogans of “the first 4K picture quality vertical screen short drama on the whole network” and “the benchmark for film-level aesthetic definition of short dramas”, which is in line with the style of Xiaohongshu users who pursue texture.
The record-breaking traffic performance of “Foolish Love” on Xiaohongshu Station, as well as the show’s “exclusive premiere” and no longer synchronous distribution, all demonstrate Xiaohongshu’s ambition and determination for short dramas.
The success of the play has made Xiaohongshu realize that under the presence of more than 70% of female users on the station, deep cultivation of female frequency must be the key to the breakthrough of the short drama business, and this style of play is undoubtedly directly embarked on the road of hard “short drama brother” Hongguo, after all, in the hot list of red fruits, female frequency dramas are undoubtedly firmly in the top spot, and classic routines such as sweet pet, sadomasochism, and marriage before love are still popular, which directly corresponds to “more than 80% of female users on the Internet”.
Between the same “red” characters, Xiaohongshu and Hongguo skits, there may be a “robbing women” drama.
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01 Xiaohongshu female frequency short drama wants more than just “coolness”
The Xiaohongshu short drama has made a high posture.
In the “Discover” column on the homepage of Xiaohongshu, the “Short Drama” channel has been automatically placed in the front position, juxtaposed with “Recommendation” and “Live Broadcast”, which cannot be edited or deleted, and users can click to enter the channel.
From the perspective of sorting, priority is given to Xiaohongshu’s exclusive short dramas, such as “Fool’s Love” and “Eve’s Daughter”. It is worth noting that these four short dramas are fixed display positions and will not change their positions due to page refresh, which means that they are the main series of Xiaohongshu at this stage.
Screenshot of Xiaohongshu
Under this, most of them are short dramas distributed on the whole platform, and many types of short dramas such as “urban”, “sweet pet” and “ancient style” are staggered displays, and there is no independent type partition for the time being, and they are not completely sorted according to the number of playbacks, showing a kind of randomness, and therefore, after opening the short drama page, you can also see that many short dramas only have hundreds of thousands of playbacks, although it is not “decent” enough, but it may also be that Xiaohongshu is gaining users’ preferences for short dramas.
In terms of user interaction, Xiaohongshu netizens prefer to intervene in the form of plot discussions, rather than directly commenting on a certain actor or character.
For example, in “Fool’s Love”, the suspenseful emotional line between the male and female protagonists has always aroused speculation and discussion among the audience, not only the “what if” proposed to the plot, envisioning another direction of the story, but also empathetic thinking from a female perspective, substituting into the state of urban men and women who cannot love and lose themselves in their relationships.
Screenshot of Xiaohongshu
In the publicity and distribution session, Xiaohongshu short dramas also adhere to the characteristics of “exquisite” into the DNA. From the delicate scene lighting, to the exquisite costumes, and the pictures with a sense of story, it can be seen that Xiaohongshu short dramas are not inferior to the marketing style of long movie series, which is in line with the pursuit of high-quality content by Xiaohongshu users. Chenyang, a producer of a short drama production company, once said in a media interview: “One of the sources of Xiaohongshu’s recognizability characteristics is the texture of materials, and as a platform that relies on graphics and texts to create a sense of exquisite atmosphere, users also prefer it.” ”
At the same time, Xiaohongshu officials have also carried out a series of refined operation actions.
“Fool’s Love” was broadcast within 4 days, during which Xiaohongshu launched user interactive tasks with different themes every day, so as to stimulate the audience to spontaneously discuss the plot, recognize the quality of the series, and discuss the unreasonable parts of the plot. This echoes the “sense of life” emphasized by Xiaohongshu, in short, “a sense of realism that is human, self-being, and non-performative”. The main creative actors in the play also took the lead in chasing the drama in Xiaohongshu, driving the account to increase fans and promoting users’ dual interaction in and out of the play.
Screenshot of Xiaohongshu
From this point of view, Xiaohongshu is taking the route of high-quality short dramas, emphasizing “fine chaff” and texture, which is also in line with the tone of the Xiaohongshu crowd, and at the same time, it also fits the background of the increasingly mature user market education after the barbaric growth of the short drama market, which is a good time to “sit and reap the benefits of the fisherman”.
Importantly, Xiaohongshu’s natural female user advantages also provide a soil for Xiaohongshu’s female frequency short dramas to grow to a certain extent, which is suitable for emotional dissemination to content.
02 Red fruit robs women, relying on “spending money”
“The red fruit doesn’t think I’m poor, why should I think it’s low?”
A ridicule from netizens almost broke the core of the red fruit short drama in recent years.
The two combinations of free short dramas + watching dramas to make money hit the sinking market, and with the upgrading of content, young women in first- and second-tier cities are accelerating the influx.
Compared with the consistent high-quality route of Xiaohongshu female frequency short dramas, Hongguo short dramas are more like gradually exploring and precipitating after some field research.
Screenshot of the red fruit skit
Backed by the big tree of ByteDance, Hongguo short dramas have carried the “rich second generation” gene since their birth. Its growth path almost replicates the successful experience of Tomato novels – using a free model to impact the originally paid market. At the same time, Hongguo short dramas have a massive IP library of female frequency novels to realize the accurate delivery of female frequency novel adaptations, which can improve user conversion efficiency, form a closed loop of “IP-short drama-advertising splitting”, and reduce customer acquisition costs.
In the early days of the short drama market, male frequency content short dramas occupied a dominant position, and the coolness of opening the golden finger all the way and the pursuit of strong conflict and fast-paced reverse transfer audiences fell.
For example, in the Spring Festival dark horse “What a Good Girl” in the Hongguo short drama, with the “double strong character design” as the core, the character design is relatively fresh, the female protagonist is well-behaved on the surface but actually hides a sharp edge, and the male protagonist is evil and sexual tension coexist. The play incorporates social issues such as class contradictions and women’s autonomy, and the number of views exceeded 1 billion in the 10 days of its launch, becoming a phenomenal hit at the beginning of the year.
Screenshot of “What a Good Girl”
Whether it is the resource help of tomato novels or the trend of high-quality short drama market, Hongguo short dramas can stand firm on the female frequency track, and in the final analysis, a solid account sharing system is indispensable.
According to data, from June to November 2024, the amount of Hongguo short dramas soared from 100 million to 300 million, accounting for more than 30% of the first month, and the long-tail effect was significant. Through the “guarantee + overflow share” mechanism (such as the Burning Plan), the platform attracts high-quality creators, promotes the frequent emergence of hits such as “What a Good Girl”, and works with a monthly account share of more than 5 million have appeared.
Judging from the data, DateEye data shows that Hongguo has 12 short dramas with more than 1 billion playbacks, and the output efficiency of popular short dramas has been greatly improved. Judging from the account sharing data, the platform shared more than 500 million accounts in March and April. From the perspective of the entire industry, this data is still eye-catching.
Red fruit short drama March and April account split report
It is worth mentioning that while Hongguo short dramas are rising rapidly, Douyin short dramas are also growing rapidly, and the content supply side gradually overlaps. Recently, Douyin Group announced the establishment of the “Short Drama Copyright Center”, coordinated by Zhang Chao, the person in charge of Hongguo, to fully integrate the supply and copyright management of short drama content, which can be regarded as Byte’s desire to achieve internal collaboration within the platform and better form an aggregation effect.
To a certain extent, Hongguo is accelerating the absolute right to speak in the short drama market, whether it is for user harvesting or for creator cooperation, which also puts more pressure on Xiaohongshu in the same style of play and about “robbing women”.
03 There is no simple win or loss
Like most other content platforms, the essence of short drama wars is also a competition for user time.
According to the data, users of Hongguo short dramas use an average of 1.38 hours a day, surpassing some long video platforms. Xiaohongshu needs to break through users’ habit of “reading the guide before opening the APP”, and on this basis, cultivate users’ habit of watching short dramas on Xiaohongshu. From this point of view, the red fruit short drama seems to have taken the lead.
From the perspective of user base and potential explosiveness, the potential of Xiaohongshu’s first- and second-tier female users should not be underestimated, and they are willing to pay for high-quality content. This also forces Xiaohongshu short dramas to move forward on the high-quality route, which in turn affects the number of online performances.
Xiaohongshu user portrait Source: Qiangua Data
To firmly follow this path, Xiaohongshu needs to face the further standardization and advantages of its own short drama system.
When Xiaohongshu wants to point to the “short drama chaff”, it must not be able to ignore the higher cost of short dramas, what it needs to tell the short drama market is that not only its own platform can give birth to traffic explosions, but also more real money is waiting for you, after all, it is as strong as Hongguo, and it is already creating one billion+ case after another, and it is also strongly revealing the temptation of “continuing to break 500 million in a single month” in the recent monthly account sharing report.
After all, the “Foolish Love” made by Xiaohongshu as a sample will also be officially landed on Hongguo on June 6, if the creator finally calculates that it is not an “exclusive debut”, and the red fruit of half a month in the evening can still earn more, then Xiaohongshu will be passive.
Stills from “Fool’s Love”
Of course, Xiaohongshu’s firm signal has still been released, and its latest announcement of the release of the “Red Mirror Short Drama Plan” in conjunction with FIRST is undoubtedly the artistic performance of FIRST to ensure the “texture” that Xiaohongshu wants, but FIRST’s weakness in telling “business stories” is even more inconsistent with the strong plot required by short dramas, which also brings out an important thinking to Xiaohongshu – whether the “short drama chaff” is the first picture or plot, Xiaohongshu needs to be further clarified from the practice of each target.
In addition to content investment, there is no simple win or loss in this “women’s grabbing” war.
Although Hongguo is an all-in short drama, and Xiaohongshu’s greater intention is to use short dramas to stabilize the core users of the platform, and Hongguo must not underestimate this “latecomer”, after all, the power of women is supporting Xiaohongshu to give birth to new top streams, and a female inspirational speech reprinted from YouTube is integrated into Xiaohongshu’s hottest notes in 2024, with as many as 2.19 million likes. Red fruits also face “passivity”.
Screenshot of Xiaohongshu
At present, in terms of the business layout of short dramas, although the two are too different, there are also “different paths to the same destination” that cannot be ignored.
When Hongguo uses the free model to promote short dramas to mass consumption, Xiaohongshu is proving that emotional resonance can create more lasting brand value.
Both are using the content form of short dramas to leverage more commercial value. Perhaps there is overlap between the two sides in the user portrait, but the female frequency short drama itself is still constantly rejuvenating, just as the long series is also exploring different forms of feminism and independent female images, and the keen insight of short dramas into female themes is also difficult and long.
The value logic of short dramas is also being rewritten – not curious FMCG, but the emotional sugar subscenic of contemporary women.
Yien Data “2025 Short Drama User Content Consumption Insights”
This means that in the second half of a short drama, the victory or defeat may not be in the amount of playback but in the mental possession. After all, a platform that can make female users willing to spend time and share their emotions at the same time is possible to have the last laugh in this red sea.
