Chinese social networking site Xiaonei has raised $430 million in funding from Softbank, according to a report from VentureBeat.
Xiaonei was founded in December 2005 by Qinghua University graduates Wang Xing, Wang Huiwen, Lai Binqiang and Jacky, then was acquired by Oak Pacific Interactive in 2006 for an undisclosed sum. As of November 2007, the site was said to be the most popular social networking site among university students in China, with 15 million registered users and 8.8 million active users.
The company likes to call itself the Facebook of China, and we’d never guess why (note, shot as run through Google Translate, they don’t offer an English version from what I could see):
