Hi5 , the no.3 social networking site

The third-largest social networking site in the world. Founders Ramu Yalamanchi and Akash Garg said they don't after having facebook and myspace is planning to dominate the international markets, the San Francisco-based site still has a lock on audiences in countries from Portugal to Mexico. Hi5's patrons visit 10-15 times a month and users spend their time playing games, sharing pictures, viewing other profiles and new applications. The site nearly doubled its users in the past year to 56 million in August from just 32 million a year earlier. Advertising is only the only major part of Hi5's business. The site have translated it into 27 languages and dialects and also plan to expand to 64 by year's end. They pay more attention and concern to Spanish-speaking and make sure to capture the differences between Argentinian slang.
Hi5 is a team of thrifty engineers. Hi5 cuts up to 15 percent of its 110 positions though it is also still hiring. One of the largest social networks in the world has laid off a number of employees this week as part of a "restructuring" effort, according to Tech Crunch.

Facebook becomes the world most popular networking site

There are several social networking sites, like MySpace, Orkut, Facebook and Friendster. Facebook has taken over all the other social networkings and today it is the world's most popular social network site, according to new figures from web tracking firm ComScore.
The North Americans earlier used Friendster , and other social network sites, as compared to the MIddle East -Africa and the North America's network growth is by nine per cent.
"While the social networking trend first took off in North America, it is beginning to reach a point of maturity in the region," said Jack Flanagan, comScore executive vice president. "However, the phenomenon is still growing rapidly in other regions around the world — especially as the established American brands turn their focus to developing markets."
Since July 2007, the other regions have grown more 20 per cent. There were almost 122.5 million users in 2007 as for this year it jumped to 165.5 million users.
Among the regions the Asia Pacific users were 162.7 million users and jumped up to 200.5 million users and Europe takes the lead for being the highest number for new adopters. As for the Latin Americans the users grew 33 per cent.
In spite of facebook being the global top network , overall Facebook has 132 million users , excluding North America. The site had also made it easier because it has a translation up to 20 language, from English , Mandarin and French. Recently they added 69 more languages.

Few Simple Steps for New Orkut Users to Secure their Orkut Account

These are the few steps every Social Networking Person must follow to secure their Accounts from being hacked by someone else.
To Secure your account you must follow these simple steps

You  need to go to the settings of your Orkut Account and then click on the privacy tab:

Steps To Secure Your Orkut Profile/Account

1) Restrict Access To Your Content

Allow only your friends to view and access your contents. This will help to keep strangers away from your profile. Scrapbook, videos and testimonials contains a lot of personal information, if accessed by others, may result in threats.

2) Friends Request By Known Persons

Under the friends request section, select the option “anyone who fits one of the following selected options” and then the first option will be automatically checked, leave the other two options as it is. This options will make sure that only your friends will be able to send you the friends request, only if they know your email address. This is an very important feature inOrkut’s security. After enabling this option, you will not get useless and irritating friends request from strangers.

3) Hide Cell Phone Number

If you verify your Orkut account or any other services related to Orkut, you cell phone number is automatically attached to your account. If you don’t want to invite any troubles, select “myself” in the options, as shown above.

4) Show Email Address Only To Friends

If you don’t want to be a winner of some lottery from South Africa or if you don’t want to buy cheap stuffs at a heavy discount, just show your email address only to your friends and no one else. Many of my friends who haven’t hidden their email address, received as many as 500 spam messages everyday.

5) Don’t Allow Others To Find You Through Email

You may have used your email address in thousands of forums as well as in many other websites. Any one who knows your email address can easily find you onOrkut . Hence it is recommended not to allow people to find you through your email address. Many of you may agree with this but there may be a large amount of people who would disagree as their long lost friends would not be able to find them on Orkut. The choice is yours.
Following these steps would definitely make your account much secure and you will no more receive unnecessary friends request. Parents can assure that, their kids are miles away from strangers.

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