Social Networking Sites

One of the online community that interests me is........

1.........2..........3.........4.......Hi5!

Hi5 was created in 2003, a little earlier than Facebook. Although they have similar applications, Facebook is definitely much more popular.

From www.alexa.com :

			Percent of global Internet users who visit facebook.com: Reach Change Yesterday 32.02 +0.1% 7 day 31.9 +1.2% 1 month 31.42 +2.81% 3 month 30.738 +12.96% Percent of global Internet users who visit hi5.com: Reach Change Yesterday 0.93 +0.4% 7 day 0.953 -1.7% 1 month 0.967 -6.1% 3 month 1.057 -13.3%

As we can see from the figures above, Facebook is much more popular than Hi5.

Facebook ranks No.1 in many countries such as Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia and even Singapore, while being No.2 in the US.

Visitors by Country for Facebook.com

Country

Percent of Site Traffic

United States

29.0%

France

4.9%

India

4.7%

Italy

4.5%

United Kingdom

4.5%

Germany

3.8%

Indonesia

3.2%

Canada

2.7%

Mexico

2.3%

Turkey

2.3%

Visitors by Country for Hi5.com

Country

Percent of Site Traffic

Mexico

17.3%

Thailand

16.0%

Portugal

8.7%

Peru

8.2%

Romania

7.2%

United States

4.3%

India

3.4%

Ecuador

3.3%

Dominican Republic

2.0%

Colombia

1.8%

From the tables above, we can see that each website attracts a different group of people although their applications may be similar. In fact, i think that the applications of Facebook and Hi5 are very similar, in terms of accepting friends, profile viewing, uploading and commenting of pictures. They even have a similar action.....

One thing i like about Hi5 is that they keep their users constantly updated about their recent press releases and media coverage. To better the relationship between both parties, there is even a blog, where there are more details, pictures and even videos.

So why is Facebook more popular than Hi5?

This is because....

WHY??

~ one major bad point about Hi5 is that it has less privacy than FB. ANYONE can look at your account even if they are not users of Hi5

~there have been comments that the design layout of Hi5 is not as eye-catching and user friendly as compared to FB

~ running Hi5 could slow down the computer

~Hi5 is not compatible with Twitter

However, i feel that different networking sites are unique in their own way, where one can be better than the other on certain aspects. The country also matters. For example, in the US, as many people use FB, it would be natural that even more people would use FB over other networking sites as they would not be able to connect to the 'majority' of the people in their country.