Lemon8: Is It Worth the Hype?

Like any new app, there will always be a mass download in the beginning, the question is will it hold on?

Now if you don't know, what is Lemon8?

“Lemon8 is a photo-based app that resembles a mixture of Instagram and Pinterest, and is sprinkled with videos that look like the ones posted on TikTok.”

It appeared a couple of weeks ago amidst the whole TikTok trial. Funny enough it's the same company that owns TikTok creating it. My first opinion of the app is that it has a fascinating approach, it’s not innovative per se like how Be Real went about it. Instead, it took the best features of Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok and combine them into one app.

I immediately downloaded that app for work purposes, I needed to make sure we had the company names taken before anyone else could have. That was one of the first articles I saw surrounding this new app was that people were taking big companies' names and creating profiles with them. I created a couple of posts and tried to understand the platform better to see if we could really use it. Since it's more of a “do it all” platform that combines all the features of the other app I wanted to see how much content we could at least repurpose onto this app.

Quick background I work for a surf apparel company located in Hawaii. Our main demographic is men but we are slowly trying to increase our women's department. Most of our content is surf/men's apparel focused with a sprinkle of custom accessories.

After exploring this app for a while I deemed it something we couldn’t really use for the company right now. I’ll still repurpose content on it but it looks like it won't cater to its current clientele. So let me break down my full experience with Lemon8, because shortly after I created accounts for my company I created an account for myself.

As a whole the app has potential, the issue is right now it feels just like a content repurposing platform. The people I see on TikTok and Instagram are just uploading their videos there now as well. The platform also seems to cater to long-form captions. This is an interesting feature that I feel no app currently favors. Lemon8 wants you to break down your outfit, list your favorite food spots and why, and talk about your trip in detail. They want those “if you're going to Japan you must visit these 3 places” articles like Pinterest but they want you to put the information in the caption instead of an external link.

Something I loved right off the bat was that the app itself has templates integrated into the posts, kind of like how Instagram reels have templates. There are text templates for photos, areas to tag clothing or accessories on photos (no link) and it all looks great. This app 100% favors the text over photos kind of look, I believe that's the more Pinterest element of it coming out. Regardless they make it very user-friendly in that aspect.

The most interesting thing I found about this app is how to put together people's profiles are already. Their content is highly curated, they use the templates provided and expand on them, and overall it just looks like that “girl you want to be” Instagram profile. I think there are a lot of influencers putting in the time to this platform hoping it will break out and be the next Tiktok and they will be the first on that train.

All and all it's a pretty interesting approach but I don't see myself personally using it often. TikTok has all the funny videos I need, Instagram has all my friends, and Pinterest search functions are just too darn good. I’m okay using three separate apps because they are great at what they do. Because of this, I’m not too sure how well this app will take off unless they make a lot of improvements in the near future. Like anything we will see how it goes. No one had faith in TikTok and look where it is now!

Let me know your experience with Lemon8! Did you love it, hate it, or don't know how to feel about it yet?

Thanks!