That other social network boasting tens of millions of members worldwide, hi5, is launching hi5 Games today, adding casual games like sports, arcade, strategy and cards to its roster of social entertainment initiatives catered to some 60 million unique monthly users.
The social networking service says hi5 Games will become an important part of its monetization strategy, with the help of their recently launched virtual currency that allows members to buy virtual gifts using real money in a digital form (still with us?). Users will eventually be able to utilize the virtual currency, called hi5 Coins, for direct transactions such as premium content, advanced gaming features and status upgrades. Hi5 is also experimenting with “new and immersive” advertising options on hi5 Games, which it says will allow brands to better engage their target audience.
Hi5 has recently laid off a good portion of its staff but continues to be a very relevant player in the social networking field; it is still the third largest social network after Facebook and MySpace according to Comscore.
Congratulations to Hi5!
This is a forward thinking company…this is an awesome way to add value to social networking.
Good luck guys!
Forward thinking? Are you serious? Ad supported flash games is hardly forward thinking.
Their site looks terrible and these games are everywhere…
If anything I’d say Hi-5 is very late to the game, so to speak.
Wow, this is new. Everyone’s getting innovate these days. I bet this feature is going to work like charm for them.
Not sure how lame games that hundreds of other websites have had for years is going to really set hi5 apart. Where is the innovation?
No innovation indeed but considering the size and reach of hi5 and the continuous boom of casual gaming still kind of a big deal.
Where is hi5 popular?
cooljobsalways
http://tinyurl.com/7uj5ay
They’re the market leader in Latin America.
not anymore. In Latin America, as in Europe, Facebook’s growth skyrocketed in the last year, leaving Hi5 behind (they’re only leaders in shitty –in terms of market size and potential revenue– countries like Portugal, Philippines and others.
Hi5 UI is awful, features are hard to discover and use, their “invite” process is one of the worst (and totally broken, by the way. They even know about it and haven’t fixed it), and overall is a lame site with a PR manager that is hot and gets a lot of attention from blogs reporting startup news.
Here, in Latin America… this is boring but ppl keeps reluctant to switch to another social service like fb…
Thanks for the post Robin!
Looking forward to try out that site, and those games.
Whoa….. omg.. never saw this comming…
Cool
Any other social network should be able to do this with the HeyZap API
http://www.heyz...e_site_type=api
big deal? every social network has games.
Hi-5 is irrelevant. they have a limited US audience and very few real advertisers. All these alleged users from obscure countries are useless.
Their site is the worst designed social networking site i have seen. They need a redesign.
Agreed it’s hardly very inovative but it’s an easy, low cost way of increasing revenues, and in the current economic environment that’s fair enough.
This is news somehow? MySpace has casual games too, take a look at how well they’re doing and you might not be that impressed. The biggest challenge with Hi5 is its user base (some have already pointed out). Its users are all in relatively (if not dirt) poor countries: Thailand, Romania, Macedonia, etc… And, also, consider this: Hi5 is based in San Francisco; for them to scale their business (through revenue), in relative buying terms, it becomes an almost impossible mission. They must know this. There’s zero chance they will overtake or slow down the momentum that Facebook has gained international (at their expense and others’) and will face unbeatable competition from Myspace in the U.S. market, as well as Facebook too. So where do they go? To never-never-land. Like so many other companies before it. What Google did to search, Facebook is doing to social networking. Where’s Lycos, Webcrawler, and other search engines today? Gone. Hi5 SHOULD have seized the latin american market when it was clearly the leader in this space, they are currently losing market space at a rapid pace. As others have also pointed out, Hi5 has done nothing to innovate. Where is their innovation? They initially copied Friendster, then MySpace, and do not have the resources to copy Facebook. For them, their time is coming to a slow, but predictable, end, and they know this.
Great and sound observation.
so what is next? a virtual world with avatars?
that would be a real SHOCKER!! pathetic.
Hi5 is the most annoying social network ever (besides something called WAYN). Constantly loading my inbox with made up invitations is the least I can hate about it.
brothers and sisters may God bless you all
Too little, toooooo late
viva el rokc