Some of the best data on the growth of social networks is coming out of the widget startups. People put widgets on their various social network user pages, and traffic is referred back to the widget companies. Other than policy changes that can have a significant impact on widget usage, it is the best traffic data available outside of the social networks themselves.
What I’m hearing from some of those widget companies is that San Francisco-based Hi5, already a big network and rumored to be quite profitable, is surging. “Traffic is up 15% month over month, and Hi5 looks like it’s second only to MySpace at this point” said one executive at a large widget startup. He also said “They are clearly bigger than all the second tier social networks – Piczo, Bebo, Tagged, etc.”
The available third party data is mostly agreeing. Hi5 has a large presence in the U.S., but the bulk of its usage is in other countries. That may explain why Comscore, which puts them at the 79th largest website based on 23 million worldwide unique visitors in December (just ahead of Facebook, which is no. 83 overall), shows a declining U.S. audience. U.S. uniques declined to 3 million in December, down from a high of just over 4 million in July 2006. Hi5 claims to have 50 million registered users, which sounds about right given the 23 million monthly unique visitor number.
Alexa shows significant growth as well, although Compete has a different story, more closely mirroring Comscore’s U.S. data.
I like the name Hi5.com But what do they do?
I know that Hi5 is fairly well-known in Asia. Could that be part of the reason for the growth? I believe that Friendster also has a similar appeal in Asia.
There’s a whole lot of people of color on that site – that’s awesome. I hadn’t spent much time on it before but I just went and watched a Diddy and Chrisina Agulara video (there were like 10 versions of the same vid) and some UGC. The Bryan Adams video for “Everything I do…” from 2001 is on the top videos page, fwiw. ok, lol /recon
I never heard of them before what about multiply
i know the secret:
hi5, spiders your address book and spams your friends – i signed up when i got an unsolicited request from a friend, she had no idea until all her friends started calling.
that’s because some people give their mail passwords when they sign up.
her BIG mistake
Give hi5 a five before using it !
@ mathew
What address book is that? Don’t you have to input friends into a list on their site first?
I actually get a lot of Hi5 email requests. All popular social networks are spammy – the key to success in that market, I suppose.
@David R.
When you create an account, at one of the final steps they ask for usernames/passwords for your Yahoo/Hotmail/Gmail account. When they have that they gret the whole address book and send invites. If I remember well you can unselect contacts though.
I agree with mathew when he says that this is a part of their success. Not illegal but abusing stupidity
Sounds interesting, but Orkut is still twice as large than hi5
Take a look…
Wow, hi5 seems to be a great source of free mp3s. Using a simple tool like firebug (www.getfirebug.com) I’m able to download over 30 Metallica songs and over 50 Eminem songs – who if I remember rightly were some of the most influential activists from the RIAA anti-filesharing camp. Wonder how long it will take them to find out about it and get on hi5’s case
Other than that, hi5 is the same as myspace. It’s far nicer to use (ok, that’s not difficult) and it has reached a critical mass of users – therefore it’s growth is hardly suprising…
Marcus
“Not illegal but abusing stupidity”
ha. thats funny razvan… good one!
Who are the investors backing Hi5. I have been trying for a couple of months to discover. Anybody has a clue ?
Im with Phil, abusing stupidity is hilarious.
First i’m hearing of this website thanks for the heads up, i just yesterday dumped my myspace page due to lack of time to maintain it. I think Ill just go take a peek and see what its all about. If it is doing well in Asia then that is the growth reason. This must be their myspace alternative.
Mark Zuckerberg is gonna hate himself for life for turning down that (what was it a billion?) offer form yahoo a while back. OMG I can only imagine how it feels to be in his shoes right now. Ik!
I have been a hi5 member for long (since 2004) and they have been a great network. I always noticed that they are more popular to countries outside the US.
I also then was lured to myspace which I never really was into for too much pornography and profile pages that are simply ridiculously designed.
I now canceled both my accounts and stay with facebook. Not that I have anything against HI5, they are a great network and I still refer people to them, but when they started with the whole “design your own profile” thing. I was out
As for my space, I left them because of too many friend request that are not even people who exist and too many badly designed pages. Yeah of course 300 pics now (wooohooo) I could careless. Its just more place for pornography and obscene pictures.
Now I only do Facebook and it rocks, but Check out HI5 if you want to meet people from all over the world.
I never liked hi5 at all….!
hi5 was huuuge in India until orkut came along, and more recently, Facebook. Personally, I didn’t like the weird copyright clauses in their ToS, and the general design of the site. What made me go back and check out the site again was the new ‘music’ section that lets you stream entire albums. One of my favourite bands, Thievery Corporation is on there.
true hi5 is very popular..
I think the point was missed. Mike isn’t so oh yeah Hi5 is great he is saying there is a business model they are unleashing and they are creating a viral network – try this http://www.tick...evineSites.html to educate yourselves. It’s not about national or international…..
Hi5 is huge here in Portugal, and all the kids and teens use it. I believe it can be compared to MySpace usage in the US.
Congrats Ramu! You earned it.
Hi5 is very used in all latin america! Almost anybody has an account there, MySpace which is popular in US, sucks in latin america, hi5 rocks!
if you check alexaradar.com you can see that Hi5 is big in South America, which isn’t a bad market to be in by any means. MySpace still rules the US of course.
Hi5’s site is so much eaiser to use than myspace or even facebook. Myspace is so passe. The friend network paradigm is so much better at hi5 too.
==Rant Mode On===
As far as I’m concerned Hi5.com is nothing but a spam generation network. I’ve received 100s, if not 1,000s, of invites over the last year (sometimes 5 or more per day), most of them obviously bogus accounts (movie stars, etc.) I would never use or recommend such a service and I’m not sure how they can be called legitimate with this kind of marketing strategy.
Avoid at all costs. If you do sign up, don’t be stupid enough to give them any email login information for your email accounts unless you really hate your friends and want to clog their email boxes with spam.
How many of their account are legitamate? Probably very low number.
==Rant Mode Off===
Hi5’s traffic stats, and user base happens to be closely tied to the amount of SPAM they send out, and emails they send to existing users trying to get them to “add there friends” contacts from AIM. Not to mention high5, is mostly an offshoot of tagged.com which used to be another company that got sued for $30+ million by MS for sending out spam.
Hi5 is still linked to tagged.
I dont know it from Asia – not yet – you know mixie or livedoor?
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I’ve found Hi5 to be quite annoying for a long time due to their pro-spam policys, but just recently started using it anyway. Why? I’m moving from DK to Costa Rica and found that around 1/4 (or what seems so) of all young Costa Ricans have a profile on Hi5.
Have never used MySpace, but tried it out yesterday. Usabilitywise, it’s way behind Hi5. If Hi5 could just fix the HTML profile hacks and stop publishing those ridiciolous “You are visitor number 999,999. You’ve WON!” adds, it would be a really great SNS.
Hi5 is constantly at maintenance, which sucks. Also the interface could be improved a lot.
I’m working at Hi5 and yes, there are some problems with Spam-bots and Scaling, but on the whole things are getting better fast. Be prepared for a lot of interesting things in the near future.
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Is it psosible to get a “password rest” email… if i didn’t even request it through Hi5? has anyon else had this happen?
OMG. i extremely despise hi5 and other spamming websites such as flixster. by accidentally putting in your password, it sends a notice to all of your contacts. it even sent emails to my elementary/middle school teachers!
Freakin hi5 spammers – I keep getting invites from people I don’t know all the time!