Hi5, a social network with 30 million active users around the world — the same size as Facebook — has reportedly raised a $20 million round. GigaOm has more, saying Mohr Davidow Ventures is the backer.
Last week, England-based social network Bebo made it clear they, like Facebook, intend to further open their site to third-party developers.
These are the latest reminders that even though the media hype has mostly transferred from MySpace to Facebook, the rest of the world is happily using a variety of social networks.
Bebo chief executive Michael Birch conceded Facebook’s platform will likely be a success as applications — which have poured onto the platform to serve Facebook users — improve over time. In the meantime, he said, “[t]here’s definitely teething issues. There’s application overload and they’re slightly Mickey Mouse at the moment.”
Hi5 has translated its site into a number of languages since it started, which has given it a big international head start over the other social networks, company chief executive Ramu Yalamanchi told us last week. As GigaOm’s post notes, it originally began as a “social-network-plus matrimonial site targeting the Indian diaspora.” The international characteristics of Hi5 contrast with Facebook’s roots in student life on American college campuses. For example, Facebook has yet to translate itself to anything besides English. Meanwhile, Myspace has been slowly opening up sites for specific countries.
Here’s numbers Comscore provided us, showing the top social networks through May:
2 Comments
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Jung Kwag said:
I believe however that simple translation ignores the fact that users in different countries use the web differently, prefer different GUI’s, have different visual prioritization, and different infrastructure in regards to both the speed of connectivity and how they can input into a service.
This ignores the different monetization levels and strategies.
Like the “global car” this is going to be a painful lesson for alot of these companies who naively believe that their format is really global. Look at Google in Asia. Traffic and revenue is not pretty. Particularly in Korea.
Not globalization but Serial localization. The Auto industry understands that. The web industries don’t..yet. Too blinded by the propaganda of the “unifying nature” of the web.
Let me laugh at that. The web is not about mass communication but mass customization. You have to morph into more and more different forms to get the same message out.
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Ria Day said:
Hi5 and Tagged increase their networks by spamming peoples address books. I don’t think this is a good way to build a business.
http://www.bizorigin.com/2007/tagged-how-did-a-spam-site-get-a-117m-valuation/
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11:44 pm
VentureBeat » Small funding, for a social network: Hi5 raises $15 million in venture debt said:
[...] This is a small amount compared to larger rival Facebook’s $240 million strategic investment from Microsoft last fall, although Hi5 did just raise $20 million in July (our coverage). [...]