MASHABLE -- Dec 10 -- Starting today hi5 is offering an assortment of 36 virtual gifts. All of the hi5 virtual gifts come "wrapped" so that your recipient can feel like they are really opening it. The price of these gifts is set at 80 coins. In the US you can snap up 80 coins for $1. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE
TECH CRUNCH -- Oct 16 -- On Monday, the 110-person company laid off 10
to 15% of its
employees in what it is calling a "restructuring" move. A tipster told
us that the cuts came mostly in Design, HR, and QA. I called to ask for
a comment and Hi5's VP of marketing Mike Trigg confirms: We did a
restructuring this week. We did let a few people go, but we are also
hiring people. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
Mark Brooks: That's got to make the people who were let go feel extra bad! C'est la vie. The downturn is giving the SNS industry the kick it needs to do some pruning so it can become more profitable more quickly.
CNN MONEY -- Oct 15 -- hi5's patrons visit 10-15 times a
month, the founders say, and spend 17 minutes per session playing
games, sharing pictures and looking at their friends' profiles. The
site nearly doubled its users in the past year to 56m in August
from just 32 million a year earlier. In July 2007, the founders took $20m in financing
from Mohr Davidow to improve and grow the site. They have translated it
into 27 languages and dialects and plan to expand to 64 by year's end. Advertising is only one part of hi5's business. The company sees a
bright future in virtual goods. By the end of
the year, they will introduce a slew of icons to buy and sell on the
site. And they're also betting big on mobile; hi5 already has a very
clean interface for users on cell phones. FULL ARTICLE @ CNN MONEY
See all posts on hi5
BUSINESS WIRE -- Oct 15 -- Shopit, a free social ecommerce platform provider, will launch the Shopit
Store App on hi5. Hi5
users can build stores within profiles and
sell to friends, people in their social community, and even people in
other networks. FULL ARTICLE @ BUSINESS WIRE
MARKET WATCH -- Oct 2 -- hi5 Networks has
introduced 10 new community-translated languages and dialects for its hi5.com
site. Users who volunteer as translators
benefit from building a community around their native language and
local culture. To ensure high-quality translations, community-driven
languages are rated by the community, validated by Lionbridge, the
leading provider of translation and localization services, and tested
by hi5's own localization team. FULL ARTICLE @ MARKET WATCH
MASHABLE -- Aug 26 -- hi5
mobile has arrived with 26
different languages. Users can update their status, share photos, and add new friends, to name a few
features. As hi5 already supports OpenSocial, and has just announced its
added support for Widgetbox's OpenSocial applications, it's clear that
hi5 is ready to offer more options to both its developer community and
user base at large. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE
MASHABLE -- Aug 25 -- Widgetbox has teamed up with hi5 to allow access to its App Gallery for an integrated solution that allows apps built on Widgetbox to act as stand-alone applications within the hi5 network. According to hi5, over 2m Widgetbox widgets have been added to hi5 from its existing support, leading to more than 65,000 subscriptions to widgets. Now, any developers that would like to create an application for hi5 now have the option of creating an OpenSocial application that's distributed on Widgetbox and through hi5 and all the other of the other social networks that have launched OpenSocial support. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE
TECH CRUNCH -- Aug 21 -- And it will soon reach 500m as four more social networks and services prepare to launch by the end of of September. There are about 4,500 different apps so far, which have been installed more than 150 million times. For Hi5 about 50% of members use an OpenSocial app at least once a day. There are 1,800 OpenSocial apps on hi5 alone, which have been installed 66 million times, so that may be representative of OpenSocial usage in general. In contrast, Facebook, which is open-sourcing its own platform for developers, has nearly 37,000 apps, which have been installed 715 million times. RockYou's apps alone have been installed 124 million times on Facebook. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
See all posts on hi5
See all posts on Facebook
See all posts on RockYou
VENTURE BEAT -- Aug 13 -- Hi5 has had a growth spurt over the first half of this
year, growing from 31m to 56m monthly active users over the first six months of
the year. Hi5 says its growth can be attributed to its long-time focus on
markets outside of the U.S. It has offered customized versions of the site in
Spanish and other languages for years, currently available in 27 total. FULL ARTICLE @ VENTURE BEAT
TECH CRUNCH -- Aug 12 -- Even though Facebook is now the largest social network
in the world,—with 132m unique visitors in June—it is also still
the fastest growing. According to figures compiled by comScore, Facebook's
visitor growth is up 153% on an annual basis. This compares to anemic 3% growth
for MySpace. Other social networks showing strong global growth include Hi5
(100 %) and Friendster (50%), Orkut and Bebo fall in at 41% and 32% growth,
respectively. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
See all posts on Facebook
See all posts on MySpace
See all posts on Hi5
See all posts on Friendster
See all posts on Orkut
See all posts on Bebo
READ WRITE WEB -- July 29 -- Online reputation company Rapleaf has released a new study of 49 million people, revealing gender and age data about social network users. On most of the main social networks - including MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Hi5 - women outnumber men by a considerable amount. On Facebook, the 18-24 age group is largest, with 1,685,029 women in that age group compared to 977,753 men. In MySpace, the same age group dominates, with 7,091,214 women and 5,226,788 men. The only social networks studied that didn't have more women than men in the 18-24 year old group were LinkedIn and Perfspot. FULL ARTICLE @ READ WRITE WEB
See all posts on Rapleaf
See all posts on MySpace
See all posts on Facebook
See all posts on Bebo
See all posts on Hi5
See all posts on LinkedIn
See all posts on Perfspot
MASHABLE -- June 30 -- Social
network hi5 has just announced its acquisition of application creator
PixVerse for an undisclosed amount. PixVerse, the Flash-based virtual
world chat platform, has branched out into social networking
applications such as Pix Chat and Pix Wall, both of which have gained
some traction on hi5's social network platform, among other places
across the Web. Founded last year, PixVerse was funded by Venrock for
an undisclosed amount. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE
TECH CRUNCH -- June 27 -- EMI,
which is looking less like a music label and more like a lawsuit label,
is at it again. They've filed a lawsuit alleging "massive
and blatant" copyright infringement by Hi5, VideoEgg and ten John Doe
defendants to be named later. The core of the suit is over copyrighted
EMI content that appears on Hi5, particularly music videos. In the recent past,
they've sued or threatened to sue AllofMP3, YouTube, Apple, MP3Tunes,
XM Radio, Infospace and even The
Beatles. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
ONLINE MEDIA DAILY -- May 12 -- Close on the heels of MySpace allowing users to
share their public profile information, rival Facebook plans to follow
suit with its own data portability program. Facebook Connect, a new
service, will let members of the social networking site link their
identities including basic profile information, photos, friends, groups
and events, as well as privacy settings, to any site. Among similar
efforts, Microsoft in March announced plans to let users of its Windows
Live platform share their contact lists with five of the top social
networks: Facebook, Bebo, LinkedIn, Tagged and Hi5. Yahoo maintains a
separate data portability arrangement with LinkedIn. FULL ARTICLE @ MEDIA POST PUBLICATIONS
BUSINESS WIRE -- May 6 -- Frengo, the provider of social mobile
services, announced the availability of a suite of applications
that run on top of and across Facebook, MySpace, hi5, Orkut and Bebo.
Frengo focuses on social applications that are fun, engaging,
entertaining and available anytime and anywhere – from a Web enabled PC
or mobile phone. FULL ARTICLE @ THE EARTH TIMES
MASHABLE -- Apr 29 -- In the last month, third-party developers have launched well
over 400 OpenSocial apps on hi5's network. These apps have continued to
have faster adoption rates than on other social networks, with the hi5
Platform averaging around a million application installs on a daily
basis. Around half of hi5's 80m members engaged with
three or more installed apps. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE
MASHABLE -- Apr 24 -- As of the first week of April (one week into the
existence of the platform), the developer platform was fully deployed,
100% OpenSocial compatible, and with over 150 apps developed and
deployed. The number of installs on these applications, in many cases,
far exceeded the number of installs on the top MySpace
applications. This rapid development and rapid adoption is largely due
to the multi-national userbase of Hi5. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE
MASHABLE -- Mar 31 -- Hi5 launched a developer platform with
support for OpenSocial. It is the first OpenSocial supporting network
to offer a messaging API. According to hi5, more than 7,700 developers have registered to
build applications on the site. Additionally, Hi5 has become a founding
member of the OpenSocial Foundation, the non-profit organization
announced last week between Google, Yahoo, and MySpace. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE
CNET NEWS -- Mar 31 -- According to latest ComScore data, Friendster is
the 8th largest Web site on the planet and the 3rd
largest social network in terms of traffic. In the last two months,
Friendster moved from 12th place to 8th place, passing: Tencent
(operator of QQ.com in China), Cyworld, NHN Corporation (operator of
Naver, the top Korean Web portal) and Hi5. Over
the last three months, Friendster grew a total of 8.7m uniques,
or 31% -- more than any other social network. FULL ARTICLE @ C NET ASIA
READ WRITE WEB -- Mar 25 -- Microsoft
partners with five social networks on data
portability. Starting today, users on Facebook and Bebo will be able to
add friends via their Windows Live address book. The functionality will
be coming to Hi5, Tagged and LinkedIn in the next few months. Microsoft
is calling this a "two-way street" and has launched a new site, invite2messenger.net, where users can invite friends from those networks to chat on Live Messenger. FULL ARTICLE @ READ WRITE WEB
Recent Comments