Iweju (Weiju in Chinese) announced that it has secured 8 digits USD series A financing led by Ceyuan– 11 months after its launch in October 2013, which at that time attracted over 7-digit RMB angel investment led by Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi and investors in YY Inc. said Jiao yi, the founder of Iweju.
Iweju is similar to that of many current existing SNS platforms in china, e.g. Momo, Inbilin (Bilin in Chinese), however it tries to differentiate itself by being the “second generation of LBS SNS platform interactor” by allowing users to initiate offline activities to attract strangers based on their shared locations.
It provides features like “gifts giving” to give the user experience a more sociable and interactive human touch. To make it more appealing, Iweju even allows users to exchange virtual gifts to real life goodies.
If we take a step back, one way or another, eventually all LBS SNS platforms will need to solve a few fundamental challengings that rooted deeply in the nature of online interaction with strangers: the psychological barrier that prevents people from trusting each other, and the efficient realisation from virtual/online interaction to offline connections, which will ultimate generate business value. Iweju thinks its model solves these issues – it promotes the concept of “meet up before talking”, which means users can start any event by inviting people near by and meet with them offline before even talking to any of them online. By doing so, it appears to allow users to skip this time consuming process of “getting to know each other” and jump directly to the final stage: meet up.
Iweju claims that currently it has over 10 million registered users. Jiao said the funding will be used principally to improve user experience and strengthen the company’s R&D and the development of the team. “ The social networking market in China remains very active and it demands much more innovations to meet its every growing needs.” Jiao said.