Hey You! Give Me A Hi5

Another Social Networking site to check out!

Hi5 has just announced the birth of its developer platform as a well supported open social network. This is extremely popular in Latin America, and has become a founding member of a non-profit organization “OpenSocial Foundation”, which was announced last week by Google, MySpace, and Yahoo.

Hi5 has a very interesting platform in which this is the first OpenSocial supporting network that offers API messaging.

This means that this site can include invitations, notifications, friend updates, and any other methods that will benefit your viral marketing techniques. This is a function that is not currently being offered on MySpace.

Mark Pincus of Zynga, who is a maker of social gaming, makes this comment to the press, in where he stated: “ “hi5 is taking the right approach to launching their platform. By opening some reasonable viral channels and making the social map available to developers and their users, hi5 is highly likely to become one of the biggest application platforms and see widespread user adoption. This is key for social games, such as Poker and Triumph, which quickly enables users to start and play games with their friends.”

So far, hi5 has announced that almost 8,000 developers have registered to build some great applications on this site. They are able to do this through their canvas pages.

According to Mashables edition on March 31, 2008 — 06:10 AM PDT — by Adam Ostrow — he stated; “One additional stat from hi5 that piqued my interest: despite having a reported 80 million users, hi5 claims that it has only 25% active user overlap with any other top social networks. This isn’t especially surprising given the network is usually cited for being popular outside the US, but highlights the significant reach OpenSocial offers.”

There are several categories and groups to be found on hi5, and according to Adam Ostrows article, they are;

Alumni, Schools and Education (336883)

Automotives (17163)

Business (22215)

Cities and Neighborhoods (70942)

Companies and coworkers (16651)

Computer and Internet (19928)

Countries and Regional (23975)

Cultures and Community (63502)

Entertainment and Arts (72743)

Family & Home (13821)

Fashion and Beauty (31554)

Games (34396)

Government and Politics (16056)

Health and Wellness (9560)

Hobbies and Crafts (29674)

Music (161750)

Pets and Animals (17226)

Religion & Beliefs (36762)

Romance and Relationships (206525)

Science and History (7972)

Sports and Recreations (91579)

Other (194086)