San Francisco, CA; July 1, 2009 -- Bigpoint, one of the largest online gaming portals, and hi5, a leading social entertainment web site, today launched Seafight, Bigpoint's flagship Flash-based pirate game, to users worldwide on the hi5 Games channel.  The game is available globally in 20 languages, making it the most widely translated game out of the hundreds of game titles available through hi5.

Seafight is a real-time fantasy-adventure game and Bigpoint's most popular title.  Since the game runs entirely in Flash, hi5 users can play Seafight directly from the hi5 Games page, with no separate application installation.  Users default to a language in the game based on their hi5 language preference.  Initial languages supported include English (UK and US), German, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Portugal and Brasil), Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.  The game, which is live on hi5 today, will be prominently featured on the hi5 Games page.  

"Given our multi-lingual global user base, deploying in-language premium content is a major priority for us," said Ramu Yalamanchi, founder and chief product officer of hi5.  "Bigpoint shares this world view and has been a leader in translating their innovative Flash-based games to a wide variety of languages, which makes them a good partner for hi5."

"As one of the world's largest online communities, hi5 provides a very compelling distribution channel for our best-in-class online games," said Heiko Hubertz, CEO Bigpoint GmbH.  "With localized versions of Seafight for virtually every hi5 user, regardless of language, we will be able to jointly tap into new markets that English-only gaming and social sites cannot effectively address."

The partnership is the latest in hi5's strategy of aligning with leading game developers worldwide to distribute their titles through the hi5 Games channel to the site's 60 million plus monthly users.  With global advertising support and a virtual currency interface for collecting in-game payments, hi5 is a compelling new distribution and monetization option for third-party game developers.  The companies expect to integrate additional Bigpoint titles into hi5 in the future.

About Bigpoint
Bigpoint.com is the largest browser game portal worldwide, and is among the top 3 gaming portals in the world.  Bigpoint's range of products and services includes games at a level of quality which, until now, was only available with CDs and consoles.  Bigpoint GmbH is a publisher of online games, a content provider for media agencies and a developer of browser-based games.  Over 240 employees from more than 25 different nations work at the world's largest Internet provider of browser games, which is based in Eppendorf in Hamburg, Germany.  At the German headquarters, games are developed in over 20 languages and are played for free by over 70 million users worldwide.  For more information on Bigpoint, visit http://www.bigpoint.net/

About hi5 Networks
Headquartered in San Francisco, hi5 is one of the world's largest and fastest growing social entertainment sites. Our focus is on delivering a fun, interactive, and immersive social experience online to our users around the world.  With over 60 million unique visitors every month, hi5 is a top 20 website globally and the number one social site in dozens of countries across Latin America, Europe, and Asia. The service is available in over 50 languages, delivering localized content, games and other applications to users worldwide.  For more information on hi5, visit http://www.hi5.com

Coverage:
Social Times

The Social Gaming Summit this week was a huge success, attracting over 500 people to a standing-room only venue at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco.  Congratulations and thanks to Charles Hudson and David Sachs for organizing such a great event, and Jeremy Liew at Lightspeed Venture Partners and the other sponsors who made the day possible.

Andrew Sheppard, executive producer at hi5, spoke on a panel with Gareth Davis from Facebook, Jason Oberfest from MySpace, and Joe Chen from Xiaonei, which was moderated by Michael Arrington from TechCrunch.  The discussion focused on the perspective of the leading global social platforms on the rapidly evolving social gaming category.  Some interesting topics of the panel included:

• The rapid convergence of online gaming with social media -- what we refer to as "Social Entertainment."
  
• The importance of providing a payment platform for game developers (in our case, the hi5 Coins virtual currency), particularly for international monetization.
• The entry of traditional console-based game companies into the social gaming category.
• The desire of many gamers to distinguish between their "real world" identity and their "game identity," as well as the tendency for users to meet new people online through game play.

Overall, hi5's differentiation and focus on social entertainment came through several times -- both in the speakers' remarks, as well as in one-on-one discussions.  Justin Smith (from the blogs Inside Facebook and Inside Social Games), who set the context for the conference with some opening remarks, noted hi5's focus on this space, including the introduction of the hi5 Games channel and our virtual currency.  Michael Arrington also mentioned hi5's focus on games and micro-payments in his comments.

The opening panel of the day featured a group of leading social gaming companies.  The panel included Mark Pincus, CEO of Zynga; Sebastian de Halleux, COO and co-founder of Playfish; and John Pleasants, the new CEO of Playdom who was previously at Electronic Arts.  Playdom and hi5 announced a partnership in May to distribute Playdom's games through the hi5 Games channel.  Discussion on this panel focused on the value users place on self-expression through games, as well as the importance of creating "stored value" for users.

Other interesting panels included one on monetization and payment platforms, featuring speakers from Zong, Super Rewards, Paypal and GMG Entertainment.  The strategy from several of the independent game developers in the audience seems to be to plug into a third-party payment platforms or simply use the virtual currency of the social site they distribute on.  hi5 launched hi5 Coins, our global virtual currency, in December 2008, and we were the first major social platform to open our virtual currency to third-party developers for collecting in-game micro-payments in May 2009.  There was also a panel on customer acquisition and retention for social games, that featured RockYou, WonderHill, Offerpal, and Tagged. Here's the full program from the day.

Andrew Sheppard, Executive Producer for hi5's interactive media business, will be appearing at the Social Gaming Summit in San Francisco tomorrow.  The panel at 11:00 AM will focus on the perspective of the major social platforms on the gaming category.  Moderated by Michael Arrington from TechCrunch, the panel will also include:

• Gareth Davis, Facebook
• Jason Oberfest, MySpace
• Joe Chen, Xiaonei

There are still a few spaces available for the event, which will be held at the Hotel Nikko.  To register, go here.

Orange and hi5 announced a partnership under which Orange will exclusively represent hi5's online advertising inventory in Spain. The deal enables hi5 to increase our revenues from our audience of more than 1.5 million monthly unique visitors in Spain.

Orange issued a press release on the news on Thursday. The press release is posted in English and Spanish on the press page of the hi5 corporate site.

The announcement has already generated several articles in Spanish publications, including:

• PuroMarketing
• El Economista
• hoyTechnologia
• Yahoo España
• La Bolsa
  

I spoke on a panel at the OMMA Publish event in New York City this week. The session, titled "The Payment Plan: Pipe Dream or Promise?" explored the business feasibility of monetizing web content via direct user payments. hi5 was unique among the publishers represented on the panel in that we feature game content on our site, which, through its interactivity, affords new ways of collecting micro-payments from users.

Some coverage ran in MediaPost, the sponsor of the event. While in New York, I also met with Nicholas Carlson at Silicon Alley Insider -- who ran this interesting post on hi5 after our conversation.

hi5 employees will be speaking at a variety of upcoming events.  Come find out the latest at these appearances:

OMMA Publish, June 17, 2009
Crowne Plaza Times Square, New York, NY
Michael Trigg, VP of Marketing, hi5

10:30 AM -- The Payment Plan: Pipe Dream or Promise?      
Like clockwork, whenever publishers see their ad sales dip online, talk about the necessity of the pay model re-emerges. It didn't work in 1997...or 2002. Is there something different about 2009 that will make consumers pay now, when they actually have less disposable income? Are pay-to-play ideas simply non-starters that waste publisher resources? Or perhaps there are other revenue streams and packaging types this time around? We bring together publishers who are revisiting the pay-to-play model, skeptics from the media buying community, and some content providers who say they need models outside of advertising.
Moderator: Terence Kawaja, Manager Director, GCA Savvian Advisors
Panelists:

• Krishan Bhatia, SVP Strategy & Development, Comcast Interactive Media
• Michael Kelly, Senior Advisor, Veronis Suhler Stevenson
• Sean Nolan, VP Online Operations and External Online Marketing, Rodale
• John Squires, EVP, Time, Inc
• Michael Trigg, VP, Marketing, hi5 Networks, Inc.

Social Gaming Summit, June 23, 2009
Hotel Nikko, San Francisco, CA
Andrew Sheppard, Executive Producer, hi5

11:00 AM -- Panel: Social Games - A Platform Perspective
Panelists:

• Jason Oberfest, MySpace
• Gareth Davis, Facebook
• Andrew Sheppard, hi5
• Joe Chen, Xiaonei
• Michael Arrington, TechCrunch

Casual Connect Seattle, July 21, 2009
Benaroya Hall, 200 University Street, Seattle, WA
Andrew Sheppard, Executive Producer, hi5

2:00 PM -- Designing, Balancing, and Managing Virtual Economies
With economies of virtual items & currencies (aka "microtransactions") having been established as the revenue growth engine for online games with frightening speed, we're all wishing we'd paid a lot more attention in those college Economics & Statistics courses. Apparently, the visionaries who planned our Liberal Arts curriculum saw this coming, but we were too myopic (or perhaps too, um, hungover) to recognize it. Well, now we know, and so we really can use this panel of experts to help us put in context the questions we never thought we would ask, but nonetheless have started to. Questions like: If a 2% paying customer base is good and a 5% customer population is great, how do I take gameplay developed in an 'everybody pays' business model and make it profitable at the lower customer percentage? Millions of people are playing my Flash games, and no one's paying more than tip money - what's going on! How often should I be modifying prices on items? I have a huge surplus of unspent currency, is this bad? What do I do about it? How do I define and measure key economic indicators in my economy?
Panelists:

• Craig Sherman, CEO Gaia Online
• Andrew Sheppard, Executive Producer hi5 Networks
• Lisa Rutherford, VP of Strategy and Business Development Twofish

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.; June 09, 2009 - hi5, the world's leading social entertainment site, today announced Peter Foster, a veteran in the field of online advertising, has joined hi5 as chief advertising officer. Foster will play a critical role in driving new revenue as the company continues to rapidly expand its social entertainment strategy.  In his new role, Foster will be responsible for all advertising sales and operations including: direct sales, regional partners, ad network relationships and mobile.   

"Peter's results-oriented skill set is an ideal fit for hi5 as we continue to advance our social entertainment strategy and develop innovative ways to monetize our audience of over 60 million users," said Bill Gossman, CEO of hi5 Networks.  "Peter is a seasoned executive and his extensive background in leading advertising sales at large properties will bring additional focus, leadership, and success as hi5 enters its next phase of growth."

Prior to joining hi5, Foster was the senior vice president of sales for Kosmix where he oversaw revenue generation efforts as well as directed the day-to-day operations of the company's sales team.  Foster also served as the senior vice president of sales for Photobucket, where he formulated strategy for direct sales and partnerships, growing revenue 300 percent and contributed to the company's acquisition by Fox Interactive Media. Foster has also held leadership positions with ValueClick Media and MaxOnline, which was later acquired by Ask.com.  Foster graduated with honors from Kenyon College.

About hi5 Networks
Headquartered in San Francisco, hi5 is one of the world's largest and fastest growing social entertainment sites. Our focus is on delivering a fun, interactive, and immersive social experience online to our users around the world.  With over 63 million unique visitors every month, hi5 is a top 20 website globally and the number one social site in dozens of countries across Latin America, Europe, and Asia. The service is available in over 50 languages, delivering localized content, games and other applications to users worldwide.  For more information on hi5, visit http://www.hi5.com

en Español

Mexico City, Mexico; June 3, 2009 -- Televisa Interactive Media ("Televisa"), the online division of Grupo Televisa, S.A.B. (NYSE: TV; BMV: TLEVISA CPO), the leading Spanish-speaking media company in the World, and hi5, the leading social entertainment website across Spanish-speaking Latin America and the 12th largest website in the world by page views, today announced a unique commercial arrangement to maximize their online audiences in the region.

As part of the deal, Televisa will be the exclusive representative of hi5's online advertising inventory in Hispanic Latin America and jointly the parties will launch a co-branded premium video channel for users of hi5, the popular social entertainment website in Latin America, serving a library of full and short length videos provided by Televisa, most of which are available through Esmas.com and through Televisa's vertical video site Tvolucion.com. The video channel will not be available to users in the United States. The availability of this new video channel is scheduled for this summer with additional premium content delivered via micro-sites shortly thereafter.

Jointly, Televisa Interactive Media and hi5 sites reach more than 33 million unique users per month across Hispanic Latin America, which represent 63% of the total market. Internet usage in these countries is growing at a rapid pace of up to 16.6% last year according to Comscore, nearly triple the North American growth of 5.7% for that same year, according to the same source.

"hi5 is an ideal content and traffic extension that perfectly complements our best-in-class suite of promotional solutions for advertisers and brands in this region," said Juan Saldívar, General Manager of Televisa Interactive Media.

"This business relationship solidifies our leadership position in Latin America and delivers compelling content to our huge Spanish-language audience. Televisa's experienced sales team and deep industry relationships will help us maximize our revenue potential in the Latin American market," said Ramu Yalamanchi, Founder and Chief Product Officer at hi5.

About Grupo Televisa, S.A.B.

Grupo Televisa, S.A.B., is the largest media company in the Spanish-speaking world and a major participant in the international entertainment business. It has interests in television production and broadcasting, production of pay-television networks, international distribution of television programming, direct to home satellite services, cable television and telecommunication services, magazine publishing and publishing distribution, radio production and broadcasting, professional sports and live entertainment, feature-film production and distribution, the operation of an internet portal, and gaming. Grupo Televisa also owns an unconsolidated equity stake in La Sexta, a free-to-air television venture in Spain.

About Televisa Interactive Media

Televisa Interactive Media is Televisa's digital business unit. Through this unit, Televisa hosts, publishes and commercializes most of Televisa's online brands. Televisa Interactive Media includes a horizontal portal, Esmas.com; a video vertical online destination, Tvolucion.com; a vertical online music brand, Tarabu, and the leading premium content supplier for mobiles in Mexico; Esmas Movil. With more than 18 million unique users and more than 320 million page views per month, Televisa Interactive Media is positioned as a leading news, entertainment and sports online operation in the Hispanic America.

About hi5 Networks

Headquartered in San Francisco, hi5 is one of the world's largest and fastest growing social entertainment sites. Our focus is on delivering a fun, interactive, and immersive social experience online to our users around the world. With over 60 million unique visitors every month, hi5 is a top 20 website globally and the number one social site in dozens of countries across Latin America, Europe, and Asia. The service is available in over 50 languages, delivering localized content, games and other applications to users worldwide. For more information on hi5, visit www.hi5.com. 

Coverage:
Wall Street Journal
Forbes
Reuters
Reuters América Latina
Variety
San Francisco Chronicle
El Universal
Hollywood Reporter
Virtual Worlds News
Social Times

Aukland, New Zealand; June 2, 2009 -- SmallWorlds, a new generation of 3D virtual world that integrates seamlessly with the rest of the web, today announced the unveiling of their engaging virtual world within the hi5 social entertainment community. With this launch, 60 million monthly unique hi5 visitors can directly access the virtual world through the hi5 Games channel to participate in the SmallWorlds experience. While inside SmallWorlds, hi5 members can create their own avatar, explore the community, customize their pet, decorate their own room with furniture, music and videos - even create their own experiences to share with others through SmallWorlds' unique Interactibles framework.

"Through this partnership, we are able to provide the hi5 community with valuable, entertaining content and a seamless experience when purchasing premium items in SmallWorlds using their hi5 Coins," said Ted Tagami, Vice President of Business Development for SmallWorlds. "We anticipate this partnership to be greatly beneficial for both parties."

With the integration of SmallWorlds into hi5, members now have immediate access to the virtual world through the hi5 Games channel and can enjoy creating and playing in competitions, games, quests and missions. In addition, hi5 members will be able to spend their hi5 Coins in SmallWorlds to purchase premium items such as rare monthly collectibles, upgrades for their room and enhancements for their avatar.

"We are dedicated to fostering social engagement for our global audience. By integrating a highly interactive virtual environment like SmallWorlds into hi5, we are providing our audience with another medium for fun and engaging social experiences," said Anil Dharni, Vice President of Products at hi5. "With the seamless integration of our virtual currency into SmallWorlds, our community will also enjoy being able to purchase items within the virtual world using their hi5 Coins."

hi5 recently announced their social entertainment strategy of seamlessly integrating interactive content from key OpenSocial partners into their infrastructure, which is continued through this partnership with SmallWorlds. The SmallWorlds virtual world will be deeply integrated into the hi5 API, providing greater access for SmallWorlds to the hi5 audience and to revenue-sharing opportunities. SmallWorlds and hi5 will share revenue generated through the SmallWorlds virtual world.

For more information, please visit: games.hi5.com.

About SmallWorlds

SmallWorlds is a new generation of virtual world combining digital media, web content and casual games into a highly accessible and entertaining 3D world that integrates seamlessly with the rest of the web. Inside SmallWorlds, audiences create their own personal space with an avatar, pet and room, and then share experiences with their friends in the community like playing games, watching videos, listening to their favorite bands, browsing through photo galleries, and so much more. SmallWorlds is also connected through open social platforms including Facebook, Bebo and MySpace. Bringing together the best aspects of online games, instant messaging, social networks and digital media, SmallWorlds integrates these interactive and engaging elements into a browser-based virtual world that is just a click away. For more information, visit www.smallworlds.com.

About hi5 Networks

Headquartered in San Francisco, hi5 is one of the world's largest and fastest growing social entertainment sites. Our focus is on delivering a fun, interactive, and immersive social experience online to our users around the world. With over 60 million unique visitors every month, hi5 is a top 20 website globally and the number one social site in dozens of countries across Latin America, Europe, and Asia. The service is available in over 50 languages, delivering localized content, games and other applications to users worldwide. For more information on hi5, visit www.hi5.com.

Coverage:
VentureBeat
Virtual Goods News
Social Times




 

NOTE: This article is a re-post of a guest article by Anil Dharni, VP of Products at hi5 and member of the OpenSocial Foundation Board of Directors, that first appeared on the OpenSocial blog.

Ever since launching our OpenSocial platform in March 2008, developers have been eager for a unified payment platform for collecting micro-transactions on hi5. Over the past year, we have moved ahead to make such a virtual currency platform available to developers while ensuring a positive user experience for our members. Over the last few weeks, hi5 has been launching our first third-party games integrated via OpenSocial-compliant APIs to our virtual currency platform - providing a standard payment method for developers to monetize their applications through our audience of over 60 million active users around the world.

The first step in this progression was the launch of our virtual currency back in December 2008, which allowed users to buy hi5 Coins and use them to purchase virtual goods on the site. This platform was initially accessible only for hi5 premium features like Gifts. We rapidly expanded the ways that users could get real currency into the system - going beyond credit/debit cards to include payment methods, such as mobile SMS, offers and alternate cards, like Ultimate Game cards, that are popular in different parts of the world.

The next step was to make our payments interface OpenSocial compliant. In order to make our virtual currency more universal across hi5 and non-hi5 applications, our OpenSocial platform team collaborated with other containers to propose an OpenSocial Virtual Currency API as an extension to the OpenSocial specification. Our virtual currency interface was expedited due to the work started by other OpenSocial containers like Xiaonei.com, 51.com, and Netlog.com. With real use cases from Asia, Europe and Latin America, the containers quickly converged on the API specifications.

The hi5 OpenSocial Virtual Currency interface is already live in public beta with several third-party developers like RockYou (RockYou Pets), Playdom (Poker Palace) and Small Worlds, enabling them to collect direct user payments within their games. We have a number of additional partnerships that will launch soon. OpenSocial developers can now leverage a standard virtual currency spec across containers - allowing them to monetize through micro-transactions without worrying about the details of payment processing, currency conversions, localized payment methods or other logistical challenges. Our users benefit, as well, with more outlets for spending their hi5 Coins and a simplified and familiar process for making payments on the hi5 site. We look forward to continuing to work with the OpenSocial community to innovate on the virtual currency standard and to make micro-transactions between users and developers a viable and growing revenue stream.