Beijing-based Kaixin001.com, a social networking Website, will be receiving US$4-5 million funding from Northern Light Venture Capital, a China concept VC firm focused on early and growth stage opportunities in technology-enabled businesses. The Shanghai Daily reported that Northern Light may take 18-20% of Kaixin’s shares in the first round of the investment, according to insiders.
Kaixin, meaning ‘happy’ or happiness in Chinese, was founded in November 2007 by leading media portal Sina’s former CTO Cheng Binghao and some of his ex-colleagues. The site recorded an average of 720,000 unique IP addresses and 30 million page views per day in August, the company claims.
Kaixin001’s appeal, especially among the highly-marketable white collar Chinese, seems to be its effective combination of a social networking platform and focus on simple gaming — which include top applications ‘Parking War’ and ‘Friend Sales‘.
Please buy me as your slave - “Friend Sales” is a game where each ‘happy user’ can be bought as a slave twice a day and ‘Masters’ earn money by making their friendly ’slaves’ work as singers, miners or toilet cleaners, all in the spirit of good fun of course.
In China, visitors to online social networking sites have jumped from 25 million Internet users per day in February to 72 million Internet users per day in July, according to Shanghai-based Internet consulting group iResearch.
Driven by increased broadband penetration and effective viral marketing, the rising popularity of online social networks has boosted China’s SNS user base in recent times. There were 61 million SNS users in 2006 and iResearch expects that figure to hit 110 million this year and 180 million users by 2010.
Other SNS services in China include popular Xiaonei.com and 51.com targeting college students; there are also dating websites, such as Jianyuan.com, and business websites, like Tianji.com. Softbank had earlier invested US$430 million in Xiaonei, China’s biggest student SNS Website with 22 million users.
An English video on ‘Chinese Facebook-like site: Kaixin001.com’
