San Francisco, CA; May 13, 2009 -- Extending its social entertainment strategy, hi5 today announced a partnership to distribute RockYou's popular RockYou Pets game to hi5's 63 million global users through the hi5 Games channel (http://games.hi5.com). RockYou will exclusively accept hi5 Coins, hi5's virtual currency, for payments in the hi5 version of the game. The partnership marks the first time a major social site has opened its payments platform to a leading social application developer, enabling better monetization opportunities for both companies.
"RockYou has been an innovator in developing engaging and highly monetizable content for social networking web sites," said Anil Dharni, vice president of products at hi5. "This deal advances our partnership by allowing RockYou and hi5 to directly monetize user engagement through hi5 Coins, the virtual currency hi5 users are already accustomed to spending in a variety of ways on our site. By providing partners with the ability to integrate our payments infrastructure into their applications, hi5 is creating a great new monetization option for application developers."
The partnership represents a significant strategic move beyond the distribution currently available to RockYou and other application developers through hi5's existing OpenSocial platform. Rather than treating RockYou Pets as a separate application that must be actively installed by users, RockYou Pets will be deeply integrated into the hi5 Games channel so new users can play the game with a simple one-click addition to their profile. RockYou and hi5 will be actively promoting RockYou Pets through preferred placement on the hi5 Games channel, promotions on the hi5 homepage, and hi5's partner-exclusive viral promotion tools. Additionally, SuperPets will leverage the hi5 Coins payment platform to drive in-game monetization.
"This partnership gives RockYou access to hi5's global user base, as well as direct access to the payments platform already familiar to hi5 users," said Lance Tokuda, CEO and founder of RockYou. "With virtual currency integration, viral marketing hooks and an expanding games channel, hi5 provides a compelling distribution channel for social application developers. RockYou Pets should do well with hi5's engaging environment."
The RockYou Pets integration is part of a larger hi5 initiative to integrate third-party content more seamlessly into the site's social entertainment experience. RockYou is the first of several OpenSocial partners to gain access to a new set of hi5 APIs that provide broader access to hi5's user base and better overall monetization potential. hi5 and RockYou will share revenue generated through the RockYou Pets game and plan to expand the agreement into other game categories in the future. RockYou Pets is available immediately on hi5 Games.
About hi5 Networks
Headquartered in San Francisco, hi5 is one of the world's largest and fastest growing social entertainment sites. Our focus is on delivering a fun, interactive, and immersive social experience online to our users around the world. With over 63 million unique visitors every month, hi5 is a top 20 website globally and the number one social site in dozens of countries across Latin America, Europe, and Asia. The service is available in over 50 languages, delivering localized content, games and other applications to users worldwide. For more information on hi5, visit http://www.hi5.com
About RockYou
RockYou is the only application distributor and developer empowering advertisers to socialize their brands through its ad network. Founded in 2006, we are one the fastest growing companies in internet history. The RockYou Ads Network evolved as we recognized the value in bringing to partner publishers our expertise in the development and monetization of social networking's most viral and visible social applications. This ability led to the industry's largest application-based ad network that serves over 18B PVs/month and reaches over 130M unique users on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, hi5 and Friendster.
Headquartered in Redwood City, California, RockYou is funded by DCM, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Partech International and Sequoia Capital, SK Telecom Ventures and Softbank. For more information about RockYou, please visit http://rockyou.com/corp/about.php
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