Tagged, a social discovery site focused on meeting new people has acquired Hi5, the social gaming network led by the boisterous Alex St. John. Hi5′s goal over the last few years, after a major redesign, was to be a destination site for gamers and a place that gave game developers better tools and deals than were available on other social networks. We interviewed CEO Alex St. John at last year’s Casual Connect, and were impressed by his vision.
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Leading social gaming site hi5 has announced a new platform today, along with a long list of high-profile social game developers embracing it. The “SocioPath” social gaming platform from hi5 is intended to offer game developers a space to develop their own communities and leverage viral audience acquisition without relying on external social networks. It is being hailed as a platform that offers all the benefits of a social network without the restrictions. Read more
At last week’s Casual Connect the first day had people atwitter about the Facebook vs. hi5 sumo match up later that evening. This was part of some ingenious marketing from the hi5 team, and they were looking to publicize the fact that their new development platform is ready to take on Facebook and establish hi5 as a truly great place to develop games. I got to sit down with Alex St. John, the former founder of WildTangent and now CTO and President of hi5, about his plans for the site. Check out the video after the jump.
hi5 announced today that they have raised $14 million in venture financing from Crosslink Capital. This is the 2nd round of financing for hi5 after their round of $20 million in July 2007. The new round of funding is meant to accelerate hi5′s expansion into social gaming and virtual goods. After their previous round of funding, hi5 made some big moves by introducing the hi5 Coins virtual currency, a virtual gifts store, the hi5 Games channel and most recently animated avatars. What will they be doing with this new round?
San Francisco’s hi5, a social network that is increasingly focused on games, has announced a new set of Facebook compatible APIs which would allow very easy porting of an application developed for Facebook. This is in addition to their current OpenSocial implementation, meaning that games developed for either API will be easily portable to the hi5 system, which is emphasizing games with their upcoming games portal.
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If you’ve scanned the social networking news recently, you’ve probably noticed that many non-Facebook social networks are losing traffic, and a lot of them are shifting direction towards games. hi5 acquired Big Six games last week and Bebo launched a dedicated games section late last year. MySpace has been losing traffic steadily for years, and their June 2009 staff cuts and re-emphasis on music, games and applications failed to entice users back to the site. Tagged.com, measured to be 2.65% of the US social network market, integrated with the ourWorld games portal this week. Can these moves help these social networks turn into social gaming networks and compete against the plethora of social games available on Facebook?
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Late last week, hi5 announced that they were acquiring Austin-based Big Six games, furthering their transition into a games-focused social network. Originally started in 2003 and having gone through several transitions, San Francisco’s hi5 now bills itself as “social entertainment for the youth market worldwide”. This comes direclty as a result of their innovative thinking in early 2008, when they raced to develop an application platform similar to Facebook. The platform exploded with games, and they morphed their business to suit those developers and gamers accordingly.
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More games for hi5. The social network that’s turned to virtual goods has teamed up with RealNetworks in order to distribute some 1,500 game titles through hi5. While the financial details of the deal have not been revealed, this does appear to be yet another way in which hi5 can leverage its virtual currency through users downloading and purchasing various premium games.
hi5 has gone so far as to create an entirely new section to house its games, which launched earlier this year. Since its launch, hi5 has been adding more and more games to its game channel, mostly through partnerships wih game house developers and distributors alike. As hi5 has also been heavily promoting its virtual currency for an integrated approach to purchasing goods, including games, it’s a win-win for both hi5 and its game providers, which is RealNetworks in this case.
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Online game portal Bigpoint is launching a game called Seafight on hi5′s recently revealed Games Channel, making it immediately available in 20 languages. Play the game on hi5 here.
The realtime fantasy adventure game is among Bigpoint’s most popular. The Flash game will be made accessible for all hi5 users without having to install a seperate application. So far the supported launguages are English, German, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Potuguese, Romanian, Russina, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.
Seafight is the lastest in a growing string of games included on hi5 and integrated with the social network’s own virtual currency. Having yet another popular game with which to apply the hi5 Coins is a revenue-generating strategy that both hi5 and Bigpoint can take advantage of. It’s a necessary shift in payment options, considering the platform approach hi5 is taking to its own growing virtual economy.
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Another big announcement from hi5 today: the social network is teaming up with Televisa in a commercial partnership with Televisa representing hi5′s online ad inventory for Spanish Latin America, and hi5 distributing Televisa’s video content through its new video channel on the social networking site.
No monetary details of the commercial partnership have been released, but the deal is exclusive between the two companies. Televisa reports significant growth on a global scale, while hi5 cites that Internet usage in Latin America has increased nearly 17% in the past year, making it one of the fastest growing Internet markets in the world.
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