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Social Network Hi5
Social Network Hi5
Social network Hi5 plans to announce on Thursday that it has built a developer application with the Google-created OpenSocial standard that "crowdsources" language translation.
This makes it possible for OpenSocial-compatible social networks or applications to let their users work to translate a site or application's text and interface into more languages, in turn making it easier for the service to have broader geographic reach. The translation app will be implemented on Hi5, a social network that was founded in San Francisco but is most popular in Spanish-speaking countries, as well as its own developer platform, and is open for more developers to use as well through OpenSocial.
Hi5's own site is already available in two dozen languages.
One big player in the social-app space that plans to use Hi5's translation code is iLike, a music service that has become popular largely through applications for platforms from Facebook to Apple's iTunes, and hopes to see its user base distributed around the world as well as across the Web. Another is RockYou, the "app factory" behind some of the most popular applications created with the Facebook and OpenSocial standards.
"As the leading music provider on hi5, we're excited to know that hi5's crowdsourcing service would expand iLike's reach internationally, helping music spread among fans from different languages, geographies and cultures," iLike CEO Ali Partovi said in a release.
The concept of crowdsourcing language translations caught fire when Facebook started enlisting volunteer members to help with the effort through an application on its own platform called Translation. The Hi5 application will, in effect, do the same thing for the OpenSocial platform.
Google built OpenSocial as a universal standard for social-network applications, and has since gained the following of almost every social site except for Facebook, which continues to use its own platform. Earlier this year, OpenSocial was spun off into a nonprofit organization separate from Google.
What Hi5 Networks' PostgreSQL installation tells us about Web 2.0 and open source
Hi5 is one of the world's largest social networks, with over 56 million monthly visitors. It's a company that demands maximum scale and performance from its infrastructure.
As such, it's no surprise that Hi5 recently opted to go with PostgreSQL as supported by EnterpriseDB.
PostgreSQL? Isn't that an open-source database? It can handle that load?
Indeed.
Hi5 runs hundreds of PostgreSQL servers in one of the world's largest commercial OLTP PostgreSQL installations. All Hi5 subscriber data, including user profiles, metadata associated with user photos, and comments, is stored on the company's PostgreSQL databases...In June 2008, the PostgreSQL-based system delivered more than 18.5 billion page views, serving nearly 11 million visitors to the site every day.
A key challenge and requirement for Hi5 is that the social-networking site cannot be taken offline for maintenance. The company's PostgreSQL databases must deliver exceptional stability and performance 24 hours per day, seven days per week, 365 days per year to serve users around the globe. Any issues must be resolved in real time, with the system still running.
That's extreme performance, and stands as a continued testament to open source and its increasingly routine ability to deliver significant performance at a lower cost, just as Red Hat announced earlier today in its Linux benchmarks.
However, the real story in Hi5's decision is its work with EnterpriseDB. The Web 2.0 world has traditionally adopted open source heavily...and paid little to nothing for it. Hence, the real news here is one Web 2.0 company's realization that buying support for open-source software makes a lot of sense/cents.
In Hi5's case, it was already using PostgreSQL before it selected EnterpriseDB to offer services around its PostgreSQL deployment. EnterpriseDB did a quick review with Hi5, discovered that its PostgreSQL deployment wasn't optimized, and convinced Hi5 that it could improve PostgreSQL's performance.
The rest is history. Hi5 is now getting better performance on its PostgreSQL deployment and using less hardware. Sure, it's paying EnterpriseDB for the service, but saving money in the process.
Yes, there are likely some Web 2.0 outfits that really can scale MySQL, PostgreSQL, Linux, etc. as well as anyone can, but guess what? They're probably not you. Most companies could use some help: support, consulting, training, etc. Save while you spend. It's really not complicated.
Hi5 goes mobile: It's a bigger deal than you think
The biggest social networks, like Facebook and MySpace, have operated mobile sites long before anyone ever held an iPhone. Midsize social networks are still warming up to the concept: Hi5, a San Francisco-based company that counts its biggest following in Latin America, formally launched Hi5 Mobile on Tuesday.
The social site has launched its mobile edition in 26 different languages, a testament to its multicultural image, and has optimized it for the iPhone, BlackBerry, and select handsets from manufacturers like Nokia and Samsung. Those translations, Hi5 says, are done on the part of locals rather than the company to make the site more "culturally relevant."
But more importantly, Hi5's mobile site is a marketing effort to reach its most loyal customers. MySpace and Facebook's current mobile sites are intended as supplements to the browser-based editions, but Hi5 openly targets the "millions of international users who primarily use mobile devices, instead of a personal computer, to stay connected with friends, family and colleagues." After all, access to PCs is less common in many Latin American countries than in Hi5's home country.
Recent statistics from ComScore indicate that Hi5 has doubled its visitor count over the past year and that much of its foothold is in Latin America; the social-networking industry in that region of the world has grown by a third since mid-2007, according to the same statistics.
While other social networks like MySpace are working hard to make headway in the Latin American market (and MySpace says its market share there is growing), launching a mobile site is a savvy move on Hi5's part.
hi5, Another Massive Social Network
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 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.