Popular international social network hi5 has introduced virtual gifts and currency to its users as a new way to spread cheer during the holidays and beyond. Starting today the site is offering an assortment of 36 virtual gifts that represent a cross-section of the world’s customs and cultures, as diverse as its user base.
hi5 is certainly targeting very specific occasions, unlike other social networks that have more generic gifts for sale. For example, you can now buy a “Rosca” - a cake that Mexicans traditionally eat on January 6th to celebrate Three Kings’ Day - or a dreidel, which is a popular toy for children during the Jewish holiday Hanukkah.
All of the hi5 virtual gifts come “wrapped” so that your recipient can feel like they are really opening it, minus the crinkle of wrapping paper. With a massive international audience in regions like Latin America I think we can expect to see even more culturally specific virtual gifts hitting their store soon.
The price of these gifts is set at 80 coins, but depending on where you live in the world and the current exchange rate, the cost of coins may vary. In the US you can snap up 80 coins for $1. Mexico will be 9 Pesos, the Euro area will set you back 1 Euro, Romania is 2 Leu and for users in Thailand you’ll need to shell out 17.50 Baht. These prices are in line with other social networks, which should help them become very popular, very quickly.
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Luckily, I don’t play poker. It’s one in the long list of addictions I’ve been lucky not to get infected with over the years. But if I did, I’d be all over Zynga’s new game for the iPhone: Live Poker.
Zynga creates games for Facebook, MySpace and other social networks. They usually don’t waste time reinventing the wheel; they go with good old ever-popular games like Texas Hold’Em, BlackJack, Scramble and Sudoku. They also have a number of action/fantasy titles such as Special Forces, Mafia Wars, Vampires and so forth. All of these translate into 4.5 billion page views, which makes Zynga the largest social gaming network around.
Their latest offering, Live Poker, allows iPhone users to play poker with their friends from social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and Hi5. It’s the first iPhone game that leverages Facebook’s Connect platform; for the end user, it means that not only can you waste your entire workday playing poker, you can also do so on your iPhone on the way home. Goodbye, free will; hello addiction.
You can get the application in the iTunes App store; the basic version is free, while an advanced version, with a larger chip package and access to tournaments, will cost you $9.99.
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This article is part of the Open Web Awards, an open, international contest for the best websites and services.
While social networking applications were all the rage last year, backlash ensued in 2008 as users got inundated with app invites and a seemingly never-ending supply of apps with little utility. To a large extent, Facebook’s re-design was actually an attempt to de-clutter the site from the mess that had been created with the developer platform.
Despite the user pushback, a number of application providers saw tremendous success in the past year. Companies like Slide, RockYou, and Playfish now have user counts in the tens of millions, while Facebook began making investments of its own in promising ideas through its fbFund. We also saw the launch of several new platforms like MySpace, LinkedIn, Friendster, and hi5 , just to name a few, all of which now support applications from third-party developers.
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iLike and TuneCore may be a bit late to the monetizing music party, following sites like Grooveshark, but they have now arrived in full force. Today TuneCore and iLike announce that indie artists will be able to earn money from people listening to and sharing their music via iLike.
iLike is poised for great leaps in success right now. They are rumored to be the favorite music application for FaceBook to endorse as its preferred app for a FaceBook music integration. Not only that, just this past summer iLike made several improvements by offering free streaming of full tracks and integrating an ad platform into their service, showing a keen eye for monetization and long term growth.
Why partner with TuneCore? iLike is more of a social discovery service for music, and TuneCore is a music distribution service. Together they have the ability to help artists make money off of the songs that they write and sing when people listen to them.
More and more services are going to this new digital revenue model in the music industry. Instead of waiting to be picked up by a label, going to the studio, going to press, advertising and going on tour, this new model allows artists to make money in real time, simultaneously with a tour, merchandise sales, CD pressing and more. No more waiting for big business to catch up. It also offers a bit of real time feedback - if you aren’t going to be popular, your level of digital revenue will reflect that immediately instead of waiting to release a CD that might fail.
What does the this proliferation of turnkey music monetization services mean for musicians? It allows them to basically be their own label. Artists submit their music via TuneCore and then it is played via iLike, and everywhere iLike is found. This includes FaceBook, embedded playlists on blogs, and more. TuneCore also gives artists access to iLike’s entire network, including hi5, Bebo, Orkut and more. TuneCore also serves music to sites like Rhapsody, Yahoo, MTV and Amazon. Artists then keep 100% of the money they make via the service.
Ali Partovi, CEO of iLike, said “As the music industry continues to reinvent itself, we believe it’s critical to offer independent musicians equal opportunity alongside major-label artists.” And he’s right - this online network created for artists by combining the reach of iLike and TuneCore enables a band or artist’s music to be heard in as many places as it would be it released by a major label. That’s a huge advantage for an artist to make money doing something they love, and isn’t that every musician’s dream? To get paid to do what they love?
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hi5, a social network that already enjoys much of its success abroad, is continuing its international expansion, launching in 10 new languages today. Similar to Facebook, hi5 has been asking its users to translate the site into localized versions around the globe.
This approach allows the social network to enter just about any market it desires, without spending major cash on attempting to effectively reach different cultures. For hi5, translations are also made available to the social network’s application developers, who would otherwise be limited to their own languages.
The languages launching today on hi5 include Catalan, Danish, British English, Finnish, Hindi, Macedonian, Slovakian, Spanish - Mexico, Spanish - Colombia, and Swedish, with 20 more expected to launch by the end of this year.
Meanwhile, Facebook is also adding support for new languages at a rapid pace. Through its Translations application, the site is currently having users localize the site for 63 different languages. Similar to hi5, Facebook developers can also leverage the translations for their own applications.
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Last week, Web 2.0 Expo NY brought out a lot of different companies and social networking platforms to debut their latest endeavors, and among the big players this year was the very popular site, Hi5. Very popular, that is, internationally.
Ever since Hi5 debuted in 2003, it has garnered millions of users in countries like Japan and Mexico, making it the third most popular social networking website worldwide after Facebook and MySpace, but only 83rd in the U.S.
I met up with Mike Trigg, head of marketing for Hi5, during the week of the conference to talk about what makes Hi5 so different from Facebook and MySpace and what the network’s plans are to win over Americans.
A special thanks to Sony for letting me use their amazing TG1 HD camcorder, without which none of the Web 2.0 Expo videos would have been possible. You can watch the video via the embed below or download the MP4 directly.
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Social network hi5 has launched a language translation tool fully compliant with the OpenSocial 0.8 standard. The tool will make it easy for developers to localize their applications, while the users will be able to communicate in their language of choice not only on hi5, but also when using third-party applications available on the hi5 Platform.
Developers who don’t have translators of their own can also leverage hi5’s community of professional and crowdsourced translators.
This is a good example of why it pays off to be a part of the OpenSocial posse; you create an internationalized application compliant with the standard and you can deploy it on any site that supports it. Of course, Facebook and its platform is now big enough to draw developers regardless of OpenSocial, but these things do make a difference in the long run.
“The availability of OpenSocial translation services on hi5 lets third-party developers easily create localized, in-language applications for millions of users around the world, increasing adoption and awareness for many companies,” said Akash Garg, CTO and co-founder of hi5. On the third-party app developer side of things, Ali Partovi, CEO of iLike said they’re “excited to know that hi5’s crowdsourcing service would expand iLike’s reach internationally, helping music spread among fans from different languages, geographies and cultures.”
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Do you see the glass as half full or half empty? It’s an important question to ask yourself in diving into a report from Synovate (republished by eMarketer this morning) showing that 58% of adults worldwide don’t know “what social networking is.”
The survey of more than 13,000 people in 17 developed nations also asked if users were losing interest in social networks. According to the report, 36% said “yes,” with interest fading fastest in Japan, Slovakia, and Canada, with 45% of US users supposedly losing their appetite for social networking.
Yikes. But now for the good news. The report polled only users 18-65 in age, leaving out the teenagers that make up much of the current audience for social networks – especially the world’s two largest – Facebook and MySpace. Further, considering 58% of respondents have no idea what social networking is, the optimist says that there is still a huge untapped market.
Further, looking at penetration in individual countries where social networking usage is perceived as high – like the US and UK – less than 30% of those with regular access to the Internet are using a social networking site. Looking at other developing parts of the world like Brazil, Russia, and Mexico, penetration sits at less than 10%, indicating a potentially huge opportunity for Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, and local competitors to expand.
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hi5 mobile has arrived. For all of those that have been waiting patiently for this social network to have a dedicated and optimized version of its service on your mobile device, here it is. And for a bit of boasting on hi5’s end, the social network’s mobile presence spans 26 different languages upon launch, setting out to create a new precedent for a global reach on the mobile front.
This makes a great deal of sense for a network like hi5, that has a large international user base, which translates into a need for ready mobile access, as many other countries use their mobile phones more often than a PC.
So what can you do on hi5’s new mobile network? Send messages, update your status, share photos, and add new friends, to name a few features. As far as media-sharing goes, users are pretty well covered, though I’m interested in seeing how networks will continue to push the boundaries in regards to third-party applications and advertising therein. 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.
From other ends of the spectrum we’re seeing development from services like Frengo that are setting out to make third-party applications more adept and integrated into mobile devices for broadened support, and such efforts could fit in well with hi5’s focus and desire to really promote its mobile offering as a full-on alternative to PC users on a global scale. Supported mobile devices include the iPhone, Nokia, Motorola, Blackberry, LG, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson.
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Even though social network hi5 has had support for Widgetbox widgets since early July, the ability for developers to fully leverage hi5 as a network in relation to these widgets was limited to the capabilities of, well, a widget. Now, 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 2 million 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.
This is yet another way in which developers can take extend their distribution, expanding on Widgetbox’s existing support for other platforms like Facebook as well. It allows hi5 to provide more value to its developer community, and allows Widgetbox to provide more channels through which its Application Gallery creations can be accessed. Given Widgetbox’s developments for its own advertising networks, making deals with large social networks will benefit Widgetbox and its advertisers and developers as well.
As hi5 was also among the first to support OpenSocial, and took things a step further with its own messaging API, there are a number of hi5-specific ways in which developers can further gain adoption for their applications. Got an app through Widgetbox on hi5? Let us know what you think of this new partnership.
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