hi5 First to Release 0.8 OpenSocial Standard

Innovative Social Networking Platform Provides a Richer, Immersive Environment for Developers San Francisco, CA; September 3, 2008 — hi5 Networks, one of the world's largest and fastest-growing social networks, today announced the release of the OpenSocial 0.8 standard, which includes a set of common RESTful APIs for building social applications across the web. The 0.8 standard upgrade provides developers with an advanced platform to build richer, more immersive and efficient social applications leveraging the power of mobile and desktop computing. hi5 is leading the charge within the OpenSocial community hosting over 1,800 applications, capturing over 68% engagement of users with one or more applications, and experiencing more than 66 million total application installs.

The most significant change from OpenSocial 0.7 to 0.8 is that the new version introduces a RESTful API that expands OpenSocial beyond its JavaScript roots. The RESTful API allows developers to choose their preferred development language to build applications that retrieve and update friend and activity data from hi5 (or other OpenSocial platforms). This new interface enables the production of a wider variety of applications for mobile devices and on traditional websites, such as IM and presence functionality, in a more defined and secure environment.

"The social web is a phenomenon we at hi5 clearly embrace and promote. Open, interoperable standards are essential to fostering the vibrant developer community that is making that vision a reality," said, Akash Garg, CTO of hi5. "OpenSocial is core to our strategy of providing our users with new, immersive and engaging ways to use hi5, so we are very pleased to be the first of the OpenSocial partners to adopt the 0.8 standard."

"I'm delighted that hi5 is the first Open Social container to release the 0.8 upgrade," said Ali Partovi, CEO of iLike, inc. "As one of hi5's most popular applications, iLike reaches a substantial audience of music fans via hi5, and we've been looking forward to these improvements in the platform."

OpenSocial 0.8 provides hi5's third party developers with pervasive social tools for building compatible applications for multiple networks -- saving time, money and code. Users can enjoy the same experience regardless of the website, web applications, or social networks they use. The release of OpenSocial is groundbreaking because it marks the first time that several social networks have joined together under a common API to make development and integration easier and more efficient for the development community.

hi5's members reap the benefits of OpenSocial 0.8 too - new, engaging and interactive applications and widgets that are more useful and fast for users' day-to-day social networking experiences. By providing simple, seamless technological tools as an alternative for application development, OpenSocial will bolster innovation and expand social engagement and new features to more places across the Internet and around the world.

About hi5 Networks Headquartered in San Francisco, hi5 is one of the world's largest and fastest growing social networks and mobile web networks. Our focus is to empower our users to build and maintain culturally relevant connections between friends and family online. With over 56 million unique visitors every month, hi5 is a top 20 website globally and the number one social network in 33 countries across Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa. The service is available in 27 languages, delivering localized content and applications to users worldwide.

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