Hi5, which launched in late 2003, is a massive MySpace-style social network. The site targets the teens and twenties demographic and claims to have over 40 million members. According to the latest Hitwise stats (June ‘06), hi5 is the 8th most visited US social network. 
However, the site is losing market share - it now accounts for 0.78% of the social networking market, down from 1.06% in May. And although not explicitly stated, Hi5 appears to be more targeted than MySpace - many of the site’s users are fans of HipHop and R&B.
Like most social networks, hi5 gives users a profile page which includes their name, gender, location and a profile picture. Users must be 13 or over, but obviously there’s no way to verify a member’s age. On sign up, the site strongly encourages users to import their friends from Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and and AOL Mail - so strongly, in fact, that it’s hard to skip this process.
Profile pages are located at username.hi5.com. What’s more, these pages are fully customizable: you can can edit the color of the background, text and links, change the default font or add a background image. For more advanced customization, users can edit the html code - this would allow you to insert videos from YouTube and Google Video, images from Photobucket and slideshows from RockYou. However, this feature seems far less popular than on MySpace, and most of the pages still carry the default design.
Hi5 also features a “degrees of separation” system similar to Friendster - your network consists of 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree friends, and you can decide whether to make your profile publicly viewable or only accessible to members of your network. You can add friends by sending a friend request or inviting people via email. In addition, you can rediscover old friends by adding your school in the “Classmates” section.
The Hi5 feature set is fairly standard: you can add comments to profile pages, post items on the bulletin boards, add members to your favorites, join groups and send messages to other users. hi5 also has a very basic blogging tool under the “Journal” section, but it seems that this is rarely used.
One popular feature is photo hosting: users can create up to 100 albums, each containing a maximum of 250 photos. Also popular are the Flash-powered chatrooms, which are based around locations or interests. However, hi5’s most unique feature is the ability to award “Fives” to other users. Fives are icons that describe a person’s personality or their relationship to you - examples include Best Friend, Better Half, Brother, Classmate, Nerd, Party Animal, Diva, Hero and Whiz Kid. If a user accepts a Five, it will appear on his or her profile page.
Hi5 Music, which is currently in beta, is broadly similar to the hugely popular MySpace Music service. Bands create their own profile pages to promote their music and connect with fans. Each band page also includes a Flash player - users can play the tracks, add them to their own pages or, in some cases, buy them from the iTunes Music Store. Popular styles include HipHop, Reggaeton and R&B.
Hi5 is a worthy rival to Facebook, Bebo, Multiply, Piczo, Tagworld and the rest. Nonetheless, MySpace continues to steal market share from all these networks.
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