Valleywag: xiaonei

Facebook ripoffs around the globe

Nicholas Carlson — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 10:20:00 PDT

Chinese Facebook clone Xiaonei claims 15 million unique visitors and $430 million in venture from backers like Japan's SoftBank. And while it sports Facebook's trademark white-and-blue, it's not our favorite foreign-language knockoff. That'd be Hainei.com, yet another Chinese imitator from Xiaonei creator Wang Xing. As our glorious leader said it best:

There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.

Go check out the rest of Facebook's foreign knockoffs at Forbes.

Chinese Facebook clone Xiaonei raises more funding than Facebook

Owen Thomas — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:00:00 PDT

Masayoshi Son is the kingmaker of the Asian Internet. His latest coronation: Xiaonei, a Chinese social network whose name translates to "on campus" and whose look and feel closely mirrors Facebook's. Son's Softbank and other investors have put $430 million into Xiaonei's parent, Oak Pacific Interactive, in a deal which values OPI at more than $1 billion. This has to worry executives at Facebook, which has raised less money — albeit while selling far less of the company to investors than Xiaonei has.

No, the problem for Facebook is the appearance of a well-funded competitor in a market Facebook has yet to crack. Entering the China market is a key reason why Facebook took money from Hong Kong telecom mogul Li Ka-Shing. (Ironically, Accel Partners, an early backer of Facebook, also invested in Oak Pacific.)

It would be foolish for Facebook to go out and raise more money simply to match Xiaonei's bankroll; equally foolish to entertain thoughts of buying the company at such a high valuation. No, Facebook's only reasonable choice here is to redouble its efforts to expand into the Chinese market. Engineers who speak Mandarin but have been rebuffed on previous attempts to get into Facebook might find its recruiters more hospitable now.

In Brief

rabruzzo — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 19:10:35 PDT

Chinese Facebook-ripoff Xiaonei.com was purchased yesterday. The college social networking site clone, which blatantly lifted its look and feel from Facebook, was acquired by Oak Pacific Interactive. We wonder why a company would want to purchase a knock-off of a more reputable brand. We can imagine in the not-to-distant future aging Venture Capitalists busing into Canada to purchase generic social networking sites at a mere fraction of the cost of name-brand US ventures.
Microsoft's Defender is now out of beta, Redmond touts its ability to "protect your computer against pop-ups, slow performance, and security threats caused by spyware and other unwanted software." So does it install a copy of MacOS X and Firefox? Sorry that was too easy.

Blatant Facebook Rip-Off Gets Acquired [Mashable]
[Mircrosoft]