Social Networking Journal

How Is Hi5 Doing In Social Media?

Hi5 is a social network, created in 2003 by Ramu Yalamanchi, an entrepreneur of Indian descent. The site follows the criteria of those of any social media, has a neat, clean design and is mostly used by Hispanic people. As of 2009, they claim to have over 60 million active users. It is currently ranked as the 26th most popular site on the web by Alexa. There is, however, a question – will hi5 sustain their growth in the countries they’re active in, or they’ll surrender their share of the market to other, larger social networks like Facebook?

Hi5’s current market:
Hi5 is popular in Latin America and some countries in Europe e.g. Romania and Portugal. It is also quite popular in Asia, namely Thailand. The use of hi5.com is falling in the U.S. and other Facebook-migrating countries. However, it will sustain at least some of their user pool in the U.S. since immigrants will continue to use the service. The site is popular among people who share the love for hip-hop and reggae, so it’s quite easy for them to target their advertising.

List of successes:
Hi5.com offers many translated versions of their site, as the site’s popular used in many different countries. They happened to quickly tap into markets of which other sites weren’t conscious with their translated versions. Hi5 music is quite developed, with the same features MySpace music offers, but their music is more targeted to their members, simply because many of them share the same taste.
They’ve adopted OpenSocial applications to a degree other sites can only dream of – more than half of their members are said to use third-party developer apps to use with hi5.com.

List of downsides:
They are known to advertise via unsolicited bulk mail aka spam and there have been reports of phishing e-mails appearing as hi5.com friend requests.
Hi5.com is getting fewer and fewer visitors each month. More and more people are turning to more popular sites like Facebook and other sites with more members than hi5, but it is arguable whether or not it’s the fault of hi5. Although subject to some innovations, they added their own IM service within the site a few months after Facebook did and generally are slower to add new features.

It looks like hi5.com has a few years to live, after that it’s only downhill. Although there is a chance that the social networking can make a comeback, they’ve have lost about 20 million users during the last year and now claim to have some 60 million active members. 60 million is still a lot, but competition is fierce in the social networking vertical and the reign of Facebook could cause hi5.com to lose a lot of visitors to Facebook in the future. The site will probably sustain the markets it has conquered, while losing in those they haven’t, but in short, it seems like it’s an uphill battle for hi5.com to compete with the larger sites. However, if they decide to fight, we might witness some innovative features added, so it is worthwhile to follow the activities of the social networking website.