Economic Observer reporter Chen Yueqin

From April 8th to 10th, the first Xiaohongshu Hackathon Summit kicked off with the sound of a gong and ended with a group photo of the entire team and the scattering of fireworks. 200 contestants can freely form teams, and each group will conduct high-intensity closed development within 48 hours to create a product demo (sample). After a one-day roadshow and selection, they will compete for a prize of 500000 yuan in the competition.

Hackathon, also known as Hackathon, requires all ideas and creations to occur within a specified time frame. In order to gain more time, some contestants wrote code continuously for 24 hours, while others slept only one hour a day for the past 3 days. The contestants were collectively in a state of both exhaustion and excitement.

Among these candidates, there are many champions and star players from top global technology competitions, as well as young entrepreneurs, current students, and employees from large factories. There is also a team with an average age of 13.25 years old for all members. They shouted the slogan of "Let's Vibe Coding" - a software development method that uses AI to directly convert natural language into computer code. As long as there is creativity, development can be done with zero programming foundation.

Yang Xizhe, born in the 2010s, is only 13 years old. He has already used AI to teach millions of people how to memorize words on multiple social media platforms, and the comment section is surrounded by parents. Chen Jinchu, born in the 2000s, self deprecatingly referred to himself as "Lao Deng" in front of Yang Xizhe, lamenting that half of the contestants on site were younger than him.

In addition to bonuses, these tech geeks also want to compete with the gods through this game and get a chance to be seen. The judging panel includes industry professionals such as Liu Jingkang, founder of Insta360, Cao Xi, founder of Monolith, and business leaders related to Xiaohongshu.

The competition is divided into two competition units: hardware and software. Some groups have developed brain controlled wheelchairs that use brainwaves to control movement; Some groups hand rubbed a lucky calendar machine capable of calculating divination in cyber games within 48 hours; Some groups drew inspiration from the tent they slept in during this competition and created an emotional companionship plugin and a robot "tent"; Some groups have developed a software that facilitates communication with hairdressers and generates customized hairstyles; Some groups have also designed an intelligent 'P pad' that can detect prolonged sitting, perceive sitting posture, provide tactile reminders, and even emit a 'pop' sound as a reminder if sitting for too long

Intelligent 'P pad' capable of monitoring prolonged sitting (Photo by Chen Yueqin)

In the end, the team that developed the pocket guitar PG-2 ignited the audience and won the biggest prize of 200000 yuan. This pocket guitar is only the size of a mobile phone, comes with a color screen and six strings, and the remote control is still removed from the SWITCH game controller.

As more and more "00s" and "10s" come to the forefront of Vibe Coding, Xiaohongshu wants to seize this group of young technology creators first.

Post-10 AI users are referred to as "AI natives" (Photo by Chen Yueqin)

According to San Bing, the head of Xiaohongshu's technology business, Xiaohongshu's long-term vision is to become the best technology community. In 2024 and 2025, it will mainly promote the "Tech Friends Circle" and introduce a group of influential people in the tech, academic, and business circles through AMA (Ask Me Anything topic initiated by Xiaohongshu).

As more and more users have a demand for product launches, there are also entrepreneurs looking for partners on Xiaohongshu. Xiaohongshu has set its goal for 2026 to be a connector for technology, connecting more upstream and downstream industries in the community, including creators and entrepreneurs. The Hackathon Summit was organized against this backdrop.

Sanbing introduced that in the early stages of the team's business strategy for the technology community, there were two things they clearly did not do: first, they did not follow the trend to become an information platform, because many users only treated technology information as news and watched the excitement; The second is not to follow the tutorial direction. The supply of technology tutorial content is too abundant, mixed with good and bad, and many people spread anxiety in order to sell courses, without truly wanting to teach others well.

Sanbing believes that the bottom layer of Xiaohongshu is a community with a sense of vitality, and lifestyle is the direction where Xiaohongshu first entered and is also the easiest to highlight the value of the community. If we explore where users' sense of liveliness and creativity are released, we will find that technology is a major direction. With the improvement of tool efficiency, more and more people are creating through Vibe Coding, and there is a growing trend. So, Xiaohongshu firmly established social networking and connections, focusing on groups such as entrepreneurs, developers, and investors who care about the technology field.

The community leader of Xiaohongshu, Palu, shared a set of numbers: Xiaohongshu has not been engaged in technology content for a long time, about two years, but the year-on-year growth rate of technology content has exceeded 100%, and the number of creators has increased by over 200%. There are 160000 developers active on Xiaohongshu, and more than 90% of users have published and created more than one product in a year.

Little Red Book tries to downplay the labels of "women's good things growing grass", "tourism card punching community", and extends its tentacles to games, anime and other fields. Now, it has made great efforts to create the prototype of a scientific and technological community. This series of transformations took 2 years.

Unlike previous editions of Hackathon where low-level programmers participated with the goal of solving specific code bugs or developing open source tools, the theme of this year's Xiaohongshu Hackathon is "48 Hours, Create a Big Toy for the World". Some of the contestants are not from programming majors, some are designers, some are music enthusiasts, and some are students.

With the popularization of large language models and low code tools, the threshold for programming has been significantly lowered, and the focus of players is no longer on solving a bug or enterprise pain point, but on self-expression. When AI can already produce PPTs throughout the process, some contestants shout out, 'Your taste is the only moat' and want to create better looking PPT tools; Some people are researching practical tools, while others are focusing on tinkering with a useless but fun product, saying, 'First make garbage, I have the freedom to make the worst garbage in the world.'; Some contestants use the slogan 'Interesting is more meaningful than meaningful itself' as their competition slogan