VIRTUAL COMMUNITY Hi5

At the conclusion of last year a friend approached me while I was surfing the net and told me about this really good virtual community that allows you to create a personal profile, invite your friends to join and then you can also view their friends profile as well. He said it was a great tool to use in order to keep in contact with friends and also make new ones. Once viewing the site www.hi5.com I was then interested and decided to have a look around. He then assisted me in setting up an account & that is my story, I have now been a part of this online community for about 5 months and I am finding it quite beneficial.

Hi5 is a place for meeting new people, connecting with friends and sharing ideas. The sign on page says "Find old friends, meet new people and browse photos" which is basically what you end up doing. This online community has taken a more broad approach in comparision to other communities that focus on specific purposes such as dating or finding old friends. The Hi5 virtual community member may interact within the confines of the community by reconnecting with old friends, casually meeting new friends by searching through profiles, or to finding someone that they might like to meet or date.

When you sign in you connect with your close group of friends and eventually as you visit the community you find more and more of your current friends online. When viewing your friends profile you are able to view their connections and friends so you are able to communicate with connected groups of friends as well as search strangers profiles. However what makes it a community is the feeling of knowing people that are connected with your real world friends. So in a sense it feels like a physical and real relationship as you may have already met or seen this person in passing.

I have found this through many personal experiences over the past 6 months that I have viewed friends profiles that have a list of people connected to them that are my personal friends as well, so you then add them to your own personal profile and become virtually connected. Also I have unexpectedly come across people that I may have seen out one night on the town in Brisbane and maybe had a brief conversation with. I find it really exciting when you see someone out that you may have something in common with only to think you will never see them again until you log in to your Hi5 profile on the World Wide Web. So this program must be set up through area codes as otherwise it would be difficult to search through individuals all over the world just to find a friend who lives locally.

I believe the aim of Hi5 is to get young people to interact socially with old and new friends through taking advantage of the people you know, and the people they know, and the people they know. Once you invite people onto the service and connect to friends already using the service, you discover a network of old friends and new people that you can meet. The service is free and it also includes features such as joining interest groups, chat, email, messaging, uploading pictures, you can view visitors to your profile, browse people, classmates, interact group mates and people within the same network as you.

You can view other peoples photo galleries and view their personal profiles. The personal profiles contain information such as personal demographics, age, gender etc, the types of people you would like to meet, sexual orientation, interests, faviourtie band, music, movies etc and you are also able to personalise your profile page to suit you. After doing this you can then add the person to your friends list if you wish. After adding an individual to your friends list you can then block them if you decide you do not wish to be connected to them any longer. For instance I came across a female that had a thing for my boyfriend and she and I do not get along so I decided the best thing to do is block her from viewing my profile.

I think people return to this site as the is an element of suprise because you don't know who you will come across that you used to know or if you have mutual friends with others. It is also a great way for singles to meet new people as my boyfriends room mate discovered as you can search through thousands of people on the one site that may turn out to live next door. Members can communicate through sending messages, email, online chat, interest group messages and making comments on others profile pages. You can also click on little buttons to give people a hi5 which may be for being cute, a diva, funny, a hero and lots of other little quirky things. Example below:

I think this site is very successful in terms of its member capacity and the frequent use of it by my friends. It is also successful in people using it to find partners, friends and people to date as I know many individuals who have met through this community and are still friends. Due to this I belileve the site must be extremely profitable.

Hope you all have a look and enjoy searching this site as it has become a regualr internet space that I visit and think is beneficial to my social experience.