Features: February 2008 Archives

In time for Chinese New Year (新年快乐!), we’ve added simplified and traditional Chinese as hi5’s newest translations. Over 1.2 billion people use these two written languages – making them so common, they were a perfect fit for our growing Asian offering.

“Chinese” is actually a collection of many diverse dialects including Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese, Min, Xiang, Hakka, and others. While Mandarin (the official language of China) is most often written in the simplified Chinese script, we provide the traditional Chinese script as well — to make hi5 readily available for as many Chinese-language Internet users as possible.

China has actually surpassed the United States in Internet usage, with over 150 million users spending nearly two billion hours online each week and a steady growth rate of 18% annually (see related Forbes article). With the addition of the Chinese scripts, we look forward to welcoming many new hi5 members in China, as well as those in other locations where the language is regularly used, such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia, and more.

欢迎全世界的华人！