14 DAY TRIAL // It's easy to look at Facebook and its 750 million users and ponder about the greatness of social networking, Mark Zuckerberg's determination, the site's increasing influence over every day life and so on and so forth.
The fact that it's worth tens of billions of dollars and may go public at a $100 billion valuation only adds to the aura of success.
But for each Facebook there are many others that have not made it. MySpace is an obvious example, but it's hardly the only one.
Hi5 was once the dominant social network in many countries, granted not the US, and it peaked at 50 million users at a time when Facebook was only starting to pick up Steam. At that time it was the third largest social network in the world.
But just as it rolled over MySpace, Facebook rolled over every other social network in almost every country it's available in, including Hi5.
It's no surprise then that Hi5 is seeing massive layoffs at this point. The company is trying to spin it as a downsizing possible due to a more efficient site infrastructure, but the writing is on the wall.
TechCrunch was able to confirm that Hi5 fired 28 people, 19 full-time employees and 9 contractors, that were indeed maintaining the site.
Hi5, which has already pivoted and is focused on games almost exclusively now, has said it's working on a new version of the site and has switched to Windows Server.
This, it says, resulted in a 12 fold reduction in server requirements. The site itself is being rebuilt on .NET which is also proving more efficient. Therefore, it can afford to run the site and the infrastructure with fewer people.
"As we have recently turned the corner on our technology migration efforts we have been able to significantly reduce the number of positions required to support the older hi5 site and are in the process of re-organizing the company to focus entirely on the development and deployment of our next generation social play site," President and CTO Alex St. John explained.