Archive for March, 2011

Mark Zuckerbergs 650 Million Friends and Counting

Friday, March 25th, 2011

Back in June 2009, the globe’s potpourri of social-networking sites was dazzlingly diverse: Google’s Orkut dominated India and Brazil; Central and South America preferred Hi5; Maktoob was king in the Arab world. The Vietnamese liked Zing, the Czechs loved Lidé, South Koreans surfed Cyworld. Fast-forward two years, and Facebook has stolen users away from its rivals at a blistering pace. It’s completely knocked Hi5 off the map in former strongholds such as Peru, Mexico, and Thailand. After a tense back-and-forth with Orkut in India, Facebook has emerged victorious. And it’s gaining steady ground in Armenia, Georgia, and the Netherlands, where local providers are making a desperate last stand.

Social Networking

Friday, March 25th, 2011

Social Networking has gained much popularity in the recent years because of the opportunities they provide to connect to each other in an easy and timely manner and to exchange various thoughts and. Orkut, Facebook, Myspace, Hi5, Linkedin, Twitter, Friendster, Ibibo, Ning are the popular ones while Facebook is the most favorite Social Networking Website. Facebooking on Internet has become order of the day, not only for youngsters but for all age groups. Facebook sometimes acts as “Power to the people”. While these Social Networks are designed to make people more social, isn’t it funny how Social Networking is making people especially the youngsters more anti-social? Youngsters and teenagers lack the ability to communicate or concentrate away from their
Facebook screens. Their real social network with their family and friends suffers a great deal. They don’t get time to attend people as they prefer to attend `Friend Requests’ on the site.
Home or outside, the Facebook has addicted the brains of young and consume all their time. Adults for adults, children are more vulnerable. It is becoming more and more evident that social networking over the web is the new opium for today’s youngsters.
Though Social Networking sites have brought the world a little closer but they are indirectly discouraging teenagers from having a healthy diet, hence posing a great risk of eating disorders as well.

hi5 Announces “SocioPay” Advanced Monetization Platform for Maximizing Social Gaming Revenue New Platform Features Ad/Commerce Hybridization Model — Initial Results Indicate a 200%-300% Increase in Monetization

Friday, March 25th, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — (Marketwire) — 02/23/11 — hi5, one of the world’s leading platforms for social games, today announced the launch of the SocioPay monetization platform designed to maximize revenue for social games. SocioPay dynamically determines the optimal monetization solution for every commerce opportunity, including identifying players who are less likely to purchase and offering advertising as an alternative

to traditional payment options. The launch of the new SocioPay platform marks the first public release of a robust ad/commerce hybridization model for the social games industry. hi5 will demonstrate how early adopters of SocioPay will optimize social game revenues in a dedicated session at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco on March 1 at 11:15 a.m. in Moscone Center’s North Hall, Room 122.

“While results are still early, we expect SocioPay to increase revenue in social games by 200%-300% over traditional commerce and lead-generation offers found on other social networks,” said Monty Kerr, hi5 Vice President of Commerce and Advertising. “The key innovation is that SocioPay extends beyond the hi5 platform; allowing developers to see dramatically increased revenue wherever their social games are distributed — even on other social networks.”

hi5 invites developers who launch their games on hi5 to leverage SocioPay for maximizing revenues everywhere they publish their social games. “We’ve received a lot of requests from developers to help them mitigate the commerce losses they are experiencing with currency and payment solutions on other social networks, and this is certainly an area where we can provide significant support,” said Alex St. John, hi5 President and Chief Technology Officer.

“Over the last year, we’ve been working closely with hi5 on the distribution of our social game titles, Port Casino Poker and Port Casino Blackjack. By implementing SocioPay, we’ll be able to gain actionable insights and achieve measurable improvements in monetization and revenue per user. hi5 is a strategic partner for us as we look to expand our business this year and we are planning to launch more titles leveraging their new SocioPay platform,” said Richard Garriott, Co-founder and Creative Director at Portalarium.

The newly launched SocioPay technology will complement the latest release of SocioPath, the next generation social gaming platform designed to liberate social games from their dependence on social networks through viral audience acquisition, which is also launching at GDC this year. The new version of SocioPath will enable over 100 social games currently distributed on the hi5 platform to be accessible directly from the site without requiring a user account or registration.

“By utilizing the SocioPath platform for our title, Bush Whacker, we’ve been able to take down the barriers to entry and acquire more new users directly into our game. hi5 is driving a new model for virally acquiring audience into social games that is effective and will be instrumental in helping us achieve our growth goals for 2011,” said David Whittaker, Co-founder of DJArts Games.

For more information about the SocioPay monetization platform and the SocioPath next generation social gaming platform, please visit developer.hi5.com :
About hi5
Founded in 2003, hi5 is among the top 20 largest web sites worldwide and one of the leading platforms focused on social entertainment and gaming. hi5 delivers a fun, interactive entertainment experience to millions of visitors worldwide by combining a robust social platform with premium content, including localized social games, virtual goods, avatars and more. The hi5 Game Developer Program enables talented social game developers to drive audience acquisition and monetization of their games on the hi5 platform through free promotion, access to viral channels, a robust commerce platform and favorable revenue shares. To learn more about the program, visit developer.hi5.com :
hi5 and the hi5 logo are trademarks of hi5 Networks, Inc. All other trademarks referenced are the property of their respective owners.