hi5 Has Launched New Developer Platform; Helping Establish OpenSocial Foundation

Today's launch is a moment our organization has been working toward for many months — in collaboration with numerous organizations and developers from around the world:

• Those we joined last fall when the OpenSocial initiative first launched, and who have worked with us since then to advance OpenSocial at conferences, hackathons, code labs and other developer meetings, including: two Silicon Valley Web Builder events in January and February; the Social Graph Foo Camp in February; the Graphing Social Patterns conference on March 4, and the Silicon Valley Google Technology User Group meeting earlier this month

• Those who came and contributed to the hi5 Hackathon, the industry's first-ever, bi-national hackathon, which was simultaneously held at the Google campus in Mountain View, California and at a university, ITESM, in Mexico City, Mexico

• Those among the more than 7700 commercial, independent and student developers who have registered to build apps for the hi5 community

We extend our sincere appreciation to all of the organizations, individual developers, hi5 staffers and others who have contributed their time and talents to help us arrive at this momentous occasion.

More Information for hi5 Users:
In the coming days, weeks and months, you will see many new applications get added to hi5, in about 20 categories initially and multiple languages, with more to come. To ensure a smooth transition and optimal user experience, we are rolling the new apps out to our membership in phases through April. Once live, you will be able to access and peruse hi5's new application catalog by clicking on the "Applications" tab from your profile.

More Information for Developers:
If you are interested in building applications for hi5, detailed information is available on our developer platform. The hi5 Platform team is also available for chat via irc://irc.freenode.net#hi5dev.