Voices » hi5

Virtual Goods Bubble Looming?

Dave Rosenberg — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 13:14:02 +0000

By Dave Rosenberg, Blogger, Negative Approach, CNET Blog Network

The buying and selling of virtual goods is an extremely nascent market that seems to be heating up dramatically. Almost daily there are announcements pronouncing large virtual good revenues on the horizon and new forms of payments and rewards for the intrepid user.

Just today social network Hi5 introduced multicultural holiday gifts along with a new payment system. Virtual world Habbo also introduced a new type of currency and reward program for loyal users.

With all of this interest and efforts toward monetization, is this a bubble waiting to burst?

So far, my answer is no.

Read the rest of this post

Women Like to Socialize but Men Are All Business on Social Networks

M.G. Siegler — Fri, 02 May 2008 07:02:11 +0000

By M.G. Siegler, Blogger, VentureBeat

OK, the title may be a slight exaggeration, but the data from a new study by the social-contact search site Rapleaf is nonetheless interesting.

In what they claim is the largest social-network study ever done, Rapleaf looked at the social connections of both men and women. All told, they collected data from over 30 million people on sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Flickr, Hi5 and others.

Interestingly, when you focus on users with fewer connections (well, relatively speaking–we’re talking about one group of people with between 1 and 100 connections, and another with between 100 and 1,000), women tend to have more friends than men. However, when you get to a really large number of connections (1,000 to 10,000, and also 10,000-plus), men have more friends.

Read the rest of this post

Microsoft in "Spam" Partnership With Five Social Networks

Steve O'Hear — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 07:00:53 +0000

By Steve O’Hear, Blogger, The Social Web, ZDNet

I’m not sure whether to call this data portability or just making it easier for social-networking services to spam a user’s contacts. But either way, Microsoft has announced partnerships with LinkedIn, Tagged, Hi5, Bebo and Facebook, to enable Windows Live Messenger users to look for contacts on either of the five social-networking sites and vice versa.

Read the rest of this post

Sneaking Around With Other People's Platforms

Dave McClure — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 08:01:00 +0000

By Dave McClure, Blogger, O’Reilly Radar

If you’re a Web developer or recent computer-science graduate, these are most certainly the best of times. With the groundbreaking launch of Facebook Platform last year, and the subsequent emergence of multiple new [open] social platforms this year–MySpace, Bebo, hi5, Friendster, Ning, Meebo, LinkedIn, etc.–we are experiencing a Geek Renaissance the likes of which the software community has never before seen.

Read the rest of this post