Startups from Finland: Xiha Life Is Looking East
Xiha Life is a Finnish social networking startup that is looking east. The company behind the site, Xiha Ltd, was actually established in China but has since moved its headquarters to Helsinki because the lack of skilled employees. They have most features that you expect from any social networking site (profiles, photo sharing, friends etc. ), but they are “focusing on multi-cultural aspects and casual games.” Xiha Life’s business model relies in advertising but also game sales. The site itself is free and so are the trial versions of the casual games that can be downloaded from the site (which seems like strange thing to offer instead of online games that could be played on the site).
The site can be used in 14 languages including English, Russian, Spanish and Chinese. According to Alexa the traffic seems to be coming around the world. 33% of users use the site in English, 22% in Spanish, but only 4% Chinese. Although you have to keep in mind that Alexa’s numbers from China are very likely to be somewhat incorrect.
The site looks a bit too colorful and unprofessional to the western eyes, but they admit that and are looking to hire a graphic designer along with more developers.
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Comments
Date: March 15, 2008 | Time: 11:56 am
Thanks for your nice article. People very often refer to Alexa (or Compete) and I wanted to comment on that: It just doesn’t work well outside the U.S., as it based on the people using their browser toolbar.
I’m looking at the Google Analytics stats for XIHA Life, here’s the current top-5 list: (countries, not languages)
1. China (13% of the total visitors)
2. USA
3. France
4. Brazil
5. Finland
Based on Alexa, Chile shows up as the largest country currently… but on GA it’s only 22nd largest! You can’t really trust Alexa at all, on global top-100 sites it might work a little better.
The design facelift should be finished soon – we didn’t want to give up on the bright happy colors, but also wanted the site to have a bit more professional look.
Best,
Juhani
XIHA Ltd
Date: March 15, 2008 | Time: 2:13 pm
You are absolutely right about the Alexa. The data that Alexa provides should be viewed with discretion, but Alexa and Compete are unfortunately at the moment the only available sources for usage data for most sites.
It was nice from you to give some accurate information on your users. I’m looking forward at seeing you new design.
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