Hi5 - The Biggest Site You've Never Heard Of

We've all heard of MySpace and are by now sick of hearing about it's fantastic growth and community of millions of users. The stories keep on coming. It is the poster-child for the web 2.0 post-bubble success of the Web. But have you ever heard of Hi5?

No? Well, you should have. Except that the mainstream media don't cover it. At all. So, what is Hi5? Hi5 is essentially MySpace for the rest of the world. Where MySpace is by and large US-based, with around 60% of their users coming from the US, Hi5 has a decidedly International user base, with only 3% of their users coming from the US. In fact, according to internal stats from Alexa, Hi5 has more users in Ecuador than the US. Hi5 is incredibly popular in a number of different countries. In Portugal, Hi5 is ranked as the 3rd most popular site, behind only msn.com and google.pt and Hi5 is ranked inside the top 5 in no less than 27 different countries.

So, with only 3% of their user-base in the U.S., there is no way they can compete with MySpace, right? Not so fast. Just because Hi5 lacks a large U.S.-based user-base doesn't mean that they don't have a huge audience. Hi5's user base is currently running at almost half of MySpace's astronomic user figures, and growing quickly. If international growth trends continue, Hi5 may catch up to MySpace in no time at all.

Hi5 isn't the only popular social networking site to be ignored by the MSM. There are actually quite a few others. Here is a quick run-down of the social networking sites:

• myspace.com - Alexa Rank: 6 - 60% of users from the U.S.
• Orkut.com - Alexa Rank: 8 - 74% of their users are from Brazil. It is actually the most popular site in Brazil, by a long shot.
  
• Hi5.com - Alexa Rank: 23 - Popular with Portuguese and Spanish countries. 14% of users from Portugal.
• Facebook.com - Alexa Rank: 34 - 75% of their users come from the United States and Canada.
  
• Friendster.com - Alexa Rank: 38 - 78% of their users are from Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Indonesia
  
• Bebo.com - Alexa Rank: 174 (and growing) - 37% of users are in the U.K.

If I had more time I could probably find dozens more. If I've missed any, feel free to let me know. I suppose the lesson here is that the mainstream media has blinders on. There are some incredible success stories out there that you will never hear about. All you have to do is spend a little time clicking through Alexa's Top 500 Sites list to spot them.

In the meanwhile, I'm going to sign up for Hi5 and brush up on my Portuguese.