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"As expected, hi5 announced the launch of its developer platform today with support for OpenSocial.  Additionally, the social network, which is most popular in Latin America, has announced that it has become a founding member of the OpenSocial Foundation, the non-profit organization announced last week between Google, Yahoo, and MySpace.  \nIn regards to the actual platform, one interesting tidbit from hi5 is that it is the first OpenSocial supporting network to offer a messaging API.  Thus, applications can include notifications, invites, friend updates, and other viral features that have helped apps on Facebook take off.  Presently, this functionality is not offered by MySpace, the other major social network where OpenSocial applications can currently be deployed.  Mark Pincus of Zynga, the social gaming maker, highlights this point in the press release, stating:\n\u201Chi5 is taking the right approach to launching their platform. By opening some reasonable viral channels and making the social map available to developers and their users, hi5 is highly likely to become one of the biggest application platforms and see widespread user adoption. This is key for social games, such as Poker and Triumph, which quickly enables users to start and play games with their friends.\u201D\nAccording to hi5, more than 7,700 developers have registered to build applications on the site.  At present, applications can be monetized via their canvas pages.  \nOne additional stat from hi5 that piqued my interest: despite having a reported 80 million users, hi5 claims that it has only 25% active user overlap with any other top social networks.  This isn\u2019t especially surprising given the network is usually cited for being popular outside the US, but highlights the significant reach OpenSocial offers."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/03/31/hi5-developer-platform/>