XIHA Life to Compete for Music Bands with MySpace

Today the multilingual social network XIHA Life (”xiha” means “fun” and “happy” in Mandarin and also “Hip-Hop” in Cantonese so it should be pronounced “ziha” following the rules of Chinese language) officially debuts in the US and offers a global music distribution channel to musicians worldwide. The social network positions itself as a truly multilingual community as it supports 34 languages (with more promised to come soon) and allows users to communicate using as many languages as they actually understand.

The site has been operating internationally since October 2007 and currently the largest communities on the social network represent China, Brazil, France, Spain, and Turkey as the company co-founder Jani Penttinen mentioned in a talk with me last week. The company itself and the development team are based out of Finland.

It is amazing that over less than a year of operation the network attracted significant traffic and currently receives over 500 thousand unique users monthly with 20% growth rate which must be a proof that people still may need yet another social network to join if it offers a truly unique experience to them.

So what is different about XIHA Life? The simple explanation is that XIHA offers a very unusual experience to people that can master more than one language. The service is intended for expatriates worldwide as well as for people who learn some language(s) in addition to their native ones. And XIHA’s advantage is that it allows users to actually view all the content available in as many languages as they speak. This approach is contrasted to the fact that on any other social network you have to choose one language for your user interface and in most cases stick to it. On XIHA Life if a user speaks, for example, English, French, and Russian, this user will see all the available content written in these specific languages while the rest of it will be filtered out since the user will hardly get a chance to understand it at all.

After the launch in the US XIHA Life is going to target one out of five Americans able to speak a language other than English. To these users XIHA Life offers all the traditional tools you expect to have on a social network - profile, blog (multiple blogs actually), unlimited photo sharing - but all the content users create will be analyzed for what language it uses and will be served only to those users that will understand it.

Another big announcement today is a totally new service for music bands to help them target global audience using those languages their audience may speak. Unlike MySpace where everything around a band is written in a single language that the band chooses, on XIHA it is possible to use multiple languages not to lose those potential listeners you may get in other countries. What’s more, users themselves can discover new music based on their language and music preferences - for example, jazz bands in Philippines singing in English.

XIHA Life offers musicians free accounts to share their music and photos while users can share the music they like via their playlists on their profiles and blogs helping bands achieve viral growth for their creations.

What I find the most impressive about the social network is that the company behind it is actually planning to achieve profitability by the end of 2008. At the same time you will not see tons of ads on the site as they have a very different monetization approach than what you usually expect. Instead of pushing multiple ads to their users the guys behind XIHA decided that they would be better off actually offering them something useful or enjoyable. The current revenue stream is based on users trying out games on the site and downloading these games for a fee if they enjoy them.

In the future the company is also planning to add some further paid services that could be either language-related (like language courses) or travel-related (booking hotel accommodation or air ticket). Obviously, both new fields will be absolutely logical for such a global multi-language community so I think that XIHA has all chances of becoming a very profitable business if they leverage the potential of its community.

My general impression is that XIHA is a very bright and good-looking social network - if only targeted at people who must be younger than me since even I feel myself more at home on sites that feature less colorful interfaces. Check out my XIHA profile if you are curious about what I am talking about and if you are a musician yourself, be sure to try out the newly-launched Music service and see if it can help you promote your music better.