Net is cast far and wide

Above: Julien Faliu connects people who are not yet expats and those who have already moved. Left: Belgian expat Hans Van Calster; second from bleow. Provided to China Daily

From base in mauritius, Julien Faliu connects a global community of expatriates

Eight years ago, Julien Faliu was living in France but working in London and then Madrid for a professional website. Even though his business kept him online, he says he couldn't find much information about the places he was living in or people like him there. "In 2005 we started talking about blogs," he says. "But there were not so many. I started reading blogs by individuals in Madrid and London and I thought, 'Let's try to get all of these expats on one website and share more experiences."

A few months later, expat-blog.com was born. Today, Faliu finds his creation still meets his personal needs. "I am still an expatriate, living in Mauritius now. And professionally, it always helps when you know what the audience needs."

Faliu wound up in Africa more or less by accident.

"One of our members proposed a contract with them here as a technical director for a startup. It was a six-month contract - now I've been here for six years.

"At the beginning, it was a blogger community but now it's open to everyone. You don't have to have a blog to participate."

The site does not collect any money for membership, he says. "But we make money on advertising banners, from companies like HSBC and insurers. We're looking for small and medium-sized services (for paid listings), too."

Faliu is seeing more and more Chinese in Mauritius as tourism grows - "Good news for Mauritius" - and the number of expats in China who use the site is also increasing.

Though the site is worldwide, language barriers are minimal.

"You have to speak English if you are an expat. It makes things much easier anywhere. Of course, we have always offered a lot in French as well. Now we provide our service in Italian and Portuguese and maybe soon in Mandarin. Who knows? We just have to recruit someone who understands what we are trying to do.

"If I could find someone to translate the website into Chinese and develop activities for our Chinese community, I would go ahead right now.

"We sell e-books on the website. Our expat guides are mostly in French, but we're starting English versions. Our US guide has been released in English. Regarding the website, we are currently building a new version, optimized for iPads and smartphones. It should be ready in a few months."

Employment and social networking are both important on the website. "We're organizing some language exchanges on the site and hope to do more soon. Flat share is another common interest."

"The idea is to be a bridge between people who are not yet expats and those who have already moved," Faliu adds.

"In most countries our numbers break down like this: 40 percent want to move abroad, 45 percent are already expats and 15 percent are locals, including some who are married to expats.

"Obviously there are some intercultural profiles in that last 15 percent."

People find the website and its blogs because they want to network with like-minded people, he says, but they are also looking to find jobs and places to live.

"And a lot of questions are about children," he says. "People want to know things like: Will a certain school be interesting for my child?"

Belgian expat Hans Van Calster says the site was a godsend when he first came to Shanghai, though he uses it less now that he has developed an extensive social circle. "It has been a great springboard for me though," he says, noting that he was active on websites such as expat-blog.com during the first two years of his time in China.

"We now count 740,000 members worldwide - more or less 1,000 new members every day," Faliu says. "We have 20,000 members in China now, including 189 nationalities."

Two years ago China was the fourth biggest in terms of consultation, but not everyone who comes to the site creates a member profile, he says. "Now our top countries are the US, France, UK, Spain, Canada, India, Saudi Arabia, China, Morocco and Vietnam.

"We're very active in the Middle East. There's lots of recruitment in the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and we were number one in Libya. There is still interesting activity there, though some foreigners left when the fighting broke out.

"There were many nights [during the Arab Spring turmoil] when I couldn't sleep - I was glued to the computer while members in Egypt, in Tunisia and in Libya were writing about guns in street. It was very scary, especially reading it in real time.

"When I speak with someone, I get interested and I want to come visit. When I created the blog, part of the idea was that I would travel a lot, but"

Faliu feels like he's seeing the world without leaving his desk, but sometimes he wishes he was using his passport as much as his keyboard.

"There are countries I never thought I would travel to but that I'm now eager to see. Saudi Arabia is one.

"Now I feel like I know people everywhere in the world, and I would have a lot of fun traveling. I am open to any destination."

michaelpeters@chinadaily.com.cn.

(China Daily Africa Weekly 06/21/2013 page29)