'Chinese Facebook' attracts major funding

1 May 2008

A Chinese social network that looks strikingly similar to Facebook has attracted investment of $430 million, reports VentureBeat.

Xiaonei, which has dubbed itself the 'Facebook of China', claims to be the largest social networking site in the country.

The funding will allow the site to be pushed 'aggressively', according to Joseph Chen, CEO of the site's owner Oak Pacific Interactive.

The investment, which comprises multiple contributions led by Japanese communications firm SoftBank, is the latest in a series of recent milestones for the Chinese online market.

Last week, research suggested that that the total number of Chinese web-users had overtaken the number in the US.

Meanwhile, Yahoo revealed a rise in profits that was largely boosted by its $401-million profit from selling Chinese trading site Alibaba.com

Category: Online marketing, Social media, Yahoo