Finnish startup XIHA makes life easier for people living abroad
XIHA Life is the first online community in the world, where people can select several languages to contact like-minded people, write blogs, share photos and create their own homepage.

/Social Networks News Articles/ - AMSTERDAM, April 05, 2008 -- XIHA Life (http://www.xihalife.com/), the world's first multilingual online community, announced at the Next Web conference a brand new language-based search feature, which enables finding people in your host country based on common languages.

All of the company's founders have been there and experienced moving to a new country several times: Need for getting acquainted with a new culture and, at the same time, keeping in touch with the friends and family back home. "Let's take a Chinese person who has recently moved to Netherlands. He or she probably wants to learn some Dutch and find local expatriate communities, which are typically English speaking. In addition to that, he or she can create a blog in Chinese or in any other language", tells Jani Penttinen, a Finnish entrepreneur who has founded his previous startups in California and China. "XIHA combines all those features into a single service. Especially women just seem to love it". During its beta testing phase, XIHA Life has had 1.2 million unique visitors, and over 70% of the members are women.

XIHA Life also connects non-profit expatriate and exchange student organizations on its country-specific search results pages. Registered users can suggest any sites which they have found useful in their host country. "Like all of the other content on the site, links are also displayed based on the user's language settings." Penttinen continues. "We are currently working on algorithms to make the user experience even better. Later this month, all of the user generated content will be automatically recognized, tagged and filtered by language. This is a unique approach, not found on any other service in the social networking space". The company plans to extend its services this year to all major web platforms, including OpenSocial and Facebook.

Press Release Contact Information:

Juhani Polkko
XIHA Ltd
CSO
Fredrikinkatu 55 C 19
Helsinki
Finland 00100
Voice: +358405430825
Website: Visit Our Website