Social Net Xiha Life Raises $1 Million, Adds Ex-Googler To Board

Xihalife Logo

One for the “what happens to execs after they sell their startups to Google” file. Jyri Engeström, the co-founder of microblogging service Jaiku, which was sold to Google in 2007, is now joining the board of the social network Xiha Life. The company also announced that it has closed a $1 million (£620 million) funding round, led by Veraventure.

Xiha Life is somewhat unique in the social networking space: while most networks tend to run in one language or another, Xiha – which means “fun/happy” in Mandarin and apparently “hip hop” in Cantonese – plays on the international element, providing on-the-fly translations for posts in different languages.

Xiha Life claims that it has 700,000 members from more than 200 countries, with no single country accounting for more than 5 percent of total traffic on its network, according to Arctic Startup. Like other social nets, the site focusses on casual games, music, and music and video sharing.

Engeström’s former company, Jaiku, was converted over Google’s app engine last March, to open the service up for integration. It is operational today but has failed to capture the public zeitgeist in the way that Twitter has.

Xiha Life is based in Finland; Sunnyvale, California; and Switzerland.

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