From Utility to Publicity: Observing the Changes in the Xiaohongshu Community through Two Spring Festival Galas

Author | Zhong Yixuan

Just last night, a trending topic suddenly became popular on Xiaohongshu, "Who can still distinguish between Sa Beining and the robot?"

At the Lantern Festival Gala, "Humanoid Robot" Sa Beining wore a northeastern floral-patterned coat, walked with a wide stance, and took slightly stiff steps, once again taking the stage with the robot that became famous during the Spring Festival Gala. The wonderful experience brought by the human-robot interaction immediately made Sa Beining and the robot simultaneously become trending topics on various social platforms.

Taking Xiaohongshu as an example, not long ago during the Spring Festival Gala, the robot northeastern yangko dance program "YangBOT" became the most discussed program on Xiaohongshu. As one of the most memorable and innovative programs of the 2025 Spring Festival Gala, in addition to being interesting, people also marveled on Xiaohongshu that this might be the moment when they most intuitively and closely witnessed the progress of AI.

Leaving aside the usual discussions, the important change we should see is that people have begun to subconsciously share their emotions, thoughts, and updates on Xiaohongshu - before this, the impression this community gave to the outside world tended to be more about usefulness, that is, "Your Life Guide". At the moment when "YangBOT" appeared on the Spring Festival Gala, almost simultaneously, a large number of users on Xiaohongshu immediately shared their observations and thoughts with posts.

The same was true for last night's Lantern Festival Gala. In addition to "Who can still distinguish between Sa Beining and the robot", a large number of real-time trending topics about the gala also emerged on Xiaohongshu, such as "Nezha Celebrates the Lantern Festival on CCTV Gala", and posts about Nezha's opening dance, as well as "Nezha Fighting and Ao Bing Mediating" have sparked heated discussions on Xiaohongshu.

Another feature is that when clicking on the above trending topics, unlike other platforms where opinions are dominated by KOLs - which often implies their power in the public domain, a large number of highly popular posts in the Xiaohongshu community come from UGC spontaneous creations, and the content is not complicated. It could be a short first impression or an open topic discussion, which is more random and authentic compared to the former.

Sometimes, these random discussions can also lead to different viewpoints. At last night's Lantern Festival Gala, a user wrote down her observations of the gala sketch "Bid Farewell to the Old and Welcome the New" on Xiaohongshu. She saw that in addition to the distinct attitudes of the three generations of a family towards "decluttering" household items, the three generations of women also had a reluctance to part with and a warmth for their common memories. This observation based on real experiences also made this post receive thousands of likes - even though the user's followers are not yet over a hundred.

Also due to the community feature of equal traffic distribution, Xiaohongshu users can be motivated under positive feedback, thereby enabling the creation of good content to be cyclical. This is also the reason why Xiaohongshu became the exclusive note-sharing platform for the 2025 CCTV Spring Festival Gala. From the official data, we can see that the total interaction volume of Xiaohongshu's Spring Festival Gala-related content this year exceeded 1.4 billion, generating 622 hot topics, which is 2.4 times that of last year.

Image source: Xiaohongshu

The significance of the Spring Festival Gala is not just a national ritual evening party. Its inherent collective memory and publicity also determine that people's discussions can go beyond the limitations of the "proximity". It is a large-scale communication field that naturally flows in the public domain. This is why many Internet companies have to bet on the Spring Festival Gala every year, either to attract new users, retain existing users, or promote new businesses. Different company topics also flow in the annual Spring Festival Gala.

Therefore, the Spring Festival Gala has also become a successful experiment for Xiaohongshu to move towards publicity. Regarding the publicity of Xiaohongshu, it has gradually emerged in the community content in recent years. As a community with over 300 million monthly active users, the content of Xiaohongshu is no longer limited to being "useful". In addition to tourism, food, beauty and other content, the content of spiritual consumption categories such as 二次元, games, and entertainment has increased significantly. Compared to skills and practicality, it is beginning to be more like a comprehensive community for discovering interests, sharing life, and spreading hotspots.

The discussion about the public domain has never disappeared. Sixty years ago, sociologist Habermas once used the "salon" as a metaphor for the public domain, but now he believes that the emergence of new media is leading to the decline of the public domain. One of the viewpoints Habermas cited is that the blurring of the boundaries between the public and private domains is causing the inclusiveness of the public domain to disappear, and the information cocoon is gradually intensifying, making people more inclined to retreat to a shielded echo chamber where like-minded people gather.

It is difficult to determine whether Xiaohongshu has achieved the characteristics of the public domain, but it is already trying to be at the forefront of publicity. In Habermas' observation of the public domain, "freedom" was once one of the important characteristics. When an ordinary community member is willing to speak out, his/her voice can be heard, seen, and felt, and the member can experience equality and respect in speaking out, it is already a confirmation of Xiaohongshu's move towards publicity.