Social network hi5 is launching an instant messaging service, hi5 IM, adding real-time interaction for users. hi5 IM, which is similar to Facebook Chat, Facebook’s instant messaging feature, shows users which friends within their network are online and runs directly in any hi5 user’s browser. In addition to one-on-one chat, users can change their status, write updates, post profile comments, and share photos through hi5 IM.
It appears that the social network is looking to amp its “entertainment features” to gain more users and is also focusing on engaging users though casual gaming and micro-payments. Hi5 also recently partnered with Paymo to power mobile payments for virtual goods. The social network is hoping that real-time chat will compliment casual games, and interaction with other content on the social network.
hi5 IM also enables users to share and express their emotions through animated hi5 “star” emoticons. The star, derived from the hi5 logo, represents a variety of virtual gestures and emotions, such as sad, happy, laughing, crying, playing dead, angry and shy. Last month, the self-described “world’s leading social entertainment web site,” got a new CEO, Bill Gossman, formerly the CEO of the online advertising service Audience Science. And at the end of March, the social network hi5 cut a large percentage of its staff following the failure of a new round of funding to materialize.
With nearly 60 million active users, hi5 has a good sized audience, but it’s long been far behind the big boys in the social networking space, MySpace and Facebook. Facebook is the most popular social network worldwide with 294.7 million unique visitors, with MySpace coming in second with 125.7 million unique visitors. hi5 gets about 63 million monthly unique visits worldwide but only 3.7 million of those are from the U.S., according to ComScore’s March stats. And a good chunk of ts audience is in countries where it is hard to attract advertisers,
good move.
long way to go in IM field. Good old im’s still dont have profile feature…
Never possible to reach Facebook’s height. Hi5 has always been slow to change. Though it started of vigorously in its early periods, not many are turning to it now. Long lost user profiles abound in the community. Anyhow, IM maybe a facelift and welcome thing for loyalists. Nothing more than that.
Totally agree!
And that feature sucks (it makes everything slow)
Where is the chat?
I can’t find it… is it in bêta for US users? (i’m in France…)
Thanks,
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Are they running the IM themselves? If so its a very expensive thing to do.
Great for engagement, but bad for them in terms of pageviews. An IM cuts pageviews massively.
Also, no one clicks on ads in IMs. Guess hi5 have big plans around their IM, but its just a functional sticky feature that is needed, but is expensive and cuts into margins.
Hi5 needs to get more innovative than this, I guess!
it just seems like, the word innovation is very new to hi5, it just take too long.
Yes, very backward when it comes to innovation. Just think, when the world is going crazy over 140 characters on Twitter, they are just now inventing IM. How silly!
haha once again techcrunch is the only website that reports something related to hi5. no one cares about hi5, it’s a piece of crap. they just copy whatever new feature facebook has, and they also suck at copying.
That’s right! I don’t know how can they survive yet.
add them to the deadpool. this company will go out of business imho.
Who cares? It’s DOA.
If hi5 wants to survive, it needs to be much more innovative than copying features from Facebook. Anecdotally, they’re losing large numbers of users in international markets to Facebook, so that 60 million users number may be getting smaller as we speak. In order to succeed (and not just survive as a second-tier player), they need to figure out a niche in the ecosystems of Facebook, MySpace, etc. AND monetize those audiences (there are others doing this very well). Trying to compete head to head with the leading social media platforms is a losing proposition, in my opinion.
Good Stuff Hi-5. I’m not a fan of your service but it looks cool.
hi5, should speed up its activities so as to meet up with facebook and stpo lagging behind.
you are 1 of america
Hi-5 is a mixture of facebook and myspace. It’s more organized then facebook and i love it! But i don’t know where chat is…
ok