Before we delve into my own experience with the platform and it’s potential, we should start by defining what Lemon8 is. Simply, Lemon8 is a photo and video-sharing platform, launched by ByteDance, who are the parent company of TikTok, in 2020.

Often described as a cross between Instagram and Pinterest, Lemon8 allows users to share photos and videos, as well as tag their posts with specific product details, links, and prices – making it a great platform for both creators and consumers to discover new products and trends.

Lemon8 curates’ content into different categories, such as fashion, beauty, food, wellness, and travel. Making it easy for users to find content that interests them.

Lemon8 boasts a fast growing, vibrant community of users, who, like on Pinterest can interact with each other by liking, commenting, and following each other’s posts. This was reinforced when listening to the influencer panel at the recent Boutique Home Event, where Helena Rudd (@Helenhomestyle) mentioned that they felt it could be incredibly popular and they were already seeing great engagement on the platform.

So, on to my own experience with Lemon8…

Before I downloaded Lemon8, I heard the name bounce around a few meetings and on social media but hadn’t heard much about the experience of the app and whether it was worth downloading. So, when I did download, I explored the app with a very open mind. I am a massive social media user with an embarrassingly high screentime, so was keen to explore this new app.

Interestingly, as soon as I started creating my account, I was prompted to choose which categories I was most interested in.  With my Social Advertising hat on, this immediately stood out to me as a great way to reach your target audience, once advertising opportunities are available (assuming this is a future feature). Compared to other apps such as TikTok relying on the content that users have interacted with in the past (which may not be as relevant).

What was immediately clear was that Lemon8 was a mix between Pinterest and TikTok. It is an app designated for inspiration and tips from home décor to food and everything in between – you could find inspiration for literally anything. Initially, I found that Lemon8 was easier to navigate than Pinterest, it was easy to find the category you were interested in exploring and the For You Page was spot on with the type of content I would be most interested in. You could easily find other users and trending hashtags too. From my initial experience, home décor and lifestyle categories are the two biggest contributors of content on the app.

Surprisingly, considering apps like TikTok and Instagram are very video-focused, this app mainly produces carousel images which I presume will not last long given 6 out of 10 people prefer watching online videos rather than images. After playing about with the app for 10/15 minutes, I did find that swiping through the carousel images felt repetitive and quite fatiguing – a very Gen Z problem to have. This is where I think TikTok takes triumph to Lemon8, not only are the videos on TikTok a lot more engaging but the swiping in just one motion down your For You Page is a lot easier to consume (and easier to hook you in and lose track of your time – a win for TikTok!).

My initial thoughts are that I found Lemon8 to be a well-designed app with a lot of potential. However, I do think it needs to focus more on video content if it wants to compete with TikTok. It would also be nice to see a more streamlined For You Page that encourages you to get lost in the world of social media (which results in more opportunities to get your content seen). Going back to my Social Advertising hat, there are definitely multiple ways to incorporate paid social advertising onto the app, especially with the initial interest-based data collection as soon as a profile is made, it makes it 100 times easier to get your product in front of the right people.

I’ll continue to use the app as I’m interested to see how Lemon8 develops in the future. I absolutely think it has the potential to be a great platform for both creators and consumers, but it needs to keep evolving if it’s going to take market share away from the other social giants – the likes of TikTok, Instagram and Pinterest.

One final thought would be to consider signing up yourself, or for your business (especially if this is in the home/ lifestyle sector!) in order to secure your desired username as you never know what future lies ahead for Lemon8! As always please get in touch with either myself or a member of the Boutique team if you’d like to know more about how to do this, or about our early experiences with Lemon8.