Bi-National Hackathon a Great Success!

Our hi5 Platform Hackathon on March 15th was a great success.  It was held simultaneously at the Google Campus in Mountain View, California, and the Campus Estado de Mexico of the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM).

Both events were stellar, with nearly 200 developers in attendance in Mountain View and over 80 developers in Mexico City. Representatives of Google, Globant, Joyent and ITESM also joined in on the fun, with both hackathon locations linked via a video conference and an IRC chat channel.

Many thanks for all of the time and effort everyone put into the event! We were pleased to hear from so many developers that our platform is already more evolved than any other OpenSocial-enabled platform, and also appreciated the feedback we received to further improve it in the next two weeks prior to the official launch.

The application showcases were also a highlight of the day, with some of the coolest apps pushing interactivity into the 3D world. Here is a sampling of a few of the apps that were demo’d:

It’s not too late to get your app included with the hi5 Platform launch! If you haven’t already done so, please register with us, review our Developer Guidelines and have your feature-complete, qualifying app in the hi5 sandbox by Friday, March 28.

Of course we couldn't finish this post without reminding you of all the great reasons you should collaborate with hi5:

hi5 is ranked by Alexa® as the #8 website globally, and the most-trafficked site in nearly a dozen countries, including many in Latin America, Europe and Asia. According to cross-visitation data from comScore, less than one third of our users are also active on other leading social networks – providing an expanded audience for your apps.

Because we are a founding adopter of OpenSocial, your apps can be deeply integrated within hi5, as well as easily translated to other OpenSocial-enabled websites – further increasing your reach potential by many millions.

With the platform launch, hi5 will provide developers with a dedicated canvas page for your applications which you can monetize through advertising (in addition to any other revenue-generating strategies you have or arrange with us).

 

We will also provide you with numerous viral channels to promote your apps to our users, including notifications, invites, messages, friend updates and more — within allowable limits to ensure an optimal user experience.

For the first 100 new apps that are approved for the hi5 Platform launch, the associated developers will win one year of scalable, on-demand architecture on a Joyent Accelerator™. Additionally, we will provide Spanish or English translation for these apps as well.

More detailed information is available in our Developer Center. You can also learn more about hi5 in the Press Room of our company website.