Hi5 goes 100%

08 Apr 2008

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It's so easy to get caught up in the flurry of things going on here in Silicon Valley (not to mention just at Slide), but I figured that Hi5 deserved being mentioned. I'd like to congratulate Lou, Anil, Paul, Zack and the rest of the Hi5 Platform team on being (from what I can tell) the first social network to turn their OpenSocial-based platform on 100% to users. As of last friday they finally ramped up to 100%, meaning every user on Hi5 can add OpenSocial applications that have been approved and added to the Hi5 applications gallery.

The past couple weeks I've been lurking on the #Hi5dev channel on Freenode, where most of the Hi5 team has been as well, dutifully answering questions and getting general developer feedback. I highly recommend following their developer blog where Lou (pictured here) has been posting regular updates and all the important things that you need to do in order to get your application viral, approved and reaching Hi5's users.

Some of the applications we've launched include: Top Friends, Slide TV and SuperPoke. Of course, if all you want to do on Hi5 is be friends with me, you can find me here :).

Overall the OpenSocial/Hi5 platform has been an interesting experience, moving more of the application into the realm of JavaScript as opposed to what I've become used to on the Facebook platform has made me think harder about the separation of front-end code from back-end code and where you actually draw the line when both are written in the same language. One down, only two to go!