hi5, a social network that already enjoys much of its success abroad, is continuing its international expansion, launching in 10 new languages today. Similar to Facebook, hi5 has been asking its users to translate the site into localized versions around the globe.

This approach allows the social network to enter just about any market it desires, without spending major cash on attempting to effectively reach different cultures. For hi5, translations are also made available to the social network’s application developers, who would otherwise be limited to their own languages.

The languages launching today on hi5 include Catalan, Danish, British English, Finnish, Hindi, Macedonian, Slovakian, Spanish - Mexico, Spanish - Colombia, and Swedish, with 20 more expected to launch by the end of this year.

Meanwhile, Facebook is also adding support for new languages at a rapid pace. Through its Translations application, the site is currently having users localize the site for 63 different languages. Similar to hi5, Facebook developers can also leverage the translations for their own applications.

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Facebook Launches Community-Driven Project to Add Foreign Language SupportFacebook’s Translation Application Now Available to DevelopersFacebook Adds 55 More Languages to Translations ApplicationFacebook Launches in SpanishGoogle’s AJAX Translation Apps Make You Global, Fast.Reddit in Spanish, and More.Livemocha: Poke Facebook Friends in New Languages

Residential real estate receives an enormous amount of attention from sites around the Web. Commercial, a bit less so. And according to Rofo, a service launched earlier this year as a beta and now officially unveiled, commercial space sized just right for the entrepreneurial, small business set is more treacherous still. Particularly in the fast-paced San Francisco Bay Area and cities beyond.

Established by two former commercial real estate brokers, Alan Bernier and Garrett Krueger, Rofo is said to catalogue some 6,000+ spaces in California’s central fixation for the startup world, all for the purposes of finding locations with square-footage that more or less encapsulates that very demographic of business. And not only does it publish listings, it cuts out the need for users to monitor posts with space needs notifications. Once items come across your account inbox, you can send property managers requests for showings, conduct Q&A sessions with users, and even publish reviews and directions for fellow users to consider when searching for space and ruminating needs.

Most everything is well drawn within Rofo’s various quarters. There’s nothing scattered or overwhelming about the place. And as far as expert- and user-generated tips and content, posts are concise and worth browsing, whether you’re involved with pre-lease or post-lease planning and habitation. Also, if for whatever reason you’d like to gauge the average price for a space in a particular city within the Rofo database, you can input your specifications into the Rofometer (embeddable on any webpage) to find out if you’re getting it too easy, too hard, or somewhere in the middle.

As a search utility alone Rofo is quite good, if unfortunately very selective in regional focus. But you can argue that being thorough in one area is better than stretching thin across a vast swath of land. And chances are Rofo will grow with time as usage demands it. As a comprehensive source for location spotting and the give-some-take-some that the advice forum provides, it’s even better.

Source:Mashable!

Last week, Web 2.0 Expo NY brought out a lot of different companies and social networking platforms to debut their latest endeavors, and among the big players this year was the very popular site, Hi5. Very popular, that is, internationally.

Ever since Hi5 debuted in 2003, it has garnered millions of users in countries like Japan and Mexico, making it the third most popular social networking website worldwide after Facebook and MySpace, but only 83rd in the U.S.

I met up with Mike Trigg, head of marketing for Hi5, during the week of the conference to talk about what makes Hi5 so different from Facebook and MySpace and what the network’s plans are to win over Americans.

A special thanks to Sony for letting me use their amazing TG1 HD camcorder, without which none of the Web 2.0 Expo videos would have been possible. You can watch the video via the embed below or download the MP4 directly.

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This morning we reported on KickApps localization offering. Stan Schroeder at Mashable is now reporting that social network hi5 has announced the launch of their OpenSocial compliant translation tool.

The hi5 translation tool is OpenSocial compliant so it will allow developers who translate their apps on hi5 to lift them and place them onto other OpenSocial-enabled networks. And hi5 is allowing developers to tap into the hi5 free labor/crowdsourced community so that the apps can be translated for nearly free. Seems like a big win for hi5/OpenSocial developers.

Schroeder notes, "This is a good example of why it pays off to be a part of the OpenSocial posse; you create an internationalized application compliant with the standard and you can deploy it on any site that supports it. Of course, Facebook and its platform is now big enough to draw developers regardless of OpenSocial, but these things do make a difference in the long run."

Check out our OpenSocial social network updates from earlier this year.

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Social network hi5 has launched a language translation tool fully compliant with the OpenSocial 0.8 standard. The tool will make it easy for developers to localize their applications, while the users will be able to communicate in their language of choice not only on hi5, but also when using third-party applications available on the hi5 Platform.

Developers who don’t have translators of their own can also leverage hi5’s community of professional and crowdsourced translators.

This is a good example of why it pays off to be a part of the OpenSocial posse; you create an internationalized application compliant with the standard and you can deploy it on any site that supports it. Of course, Facebook and its platform is now big enough to draw developers regardless of OpenSocial, but these things do make a difference in the long run.

“The availability of OpenSocial translation services on hi5 lets third-party developers easily create localized, in-language applications for millions of users around the world, increasing adoption and awareness for many companies,” said Akash Garg, CTO and co-founder of hi5. On the third-party app developer side of things, Ali Partovi, CEO of iLike said they’re “excited to know that hi5’s crowdsourcing service would expand iLike’s reach internationally, helping music spread among fans from different languages, geographies and cultures.”

—Related Articles at Mashable | All That’s New on the Web:Google’s AJAX Translation Apps Make You Global, Fast.Facebook’s Translation Application Now Available to DevelopersMicrosoft Launches Online Translation ServiceNetLog Opens On-The-Fly Translations to DevelopersGoogle Translate Now Eats its Own Dog FoodGoogle’s Translation Engine Now LiveJajah Babel Offers English to Mandarin Translations Just in Time for Olympics

Do you see the glass as half full or half empty? It’s an important question to ask yourself in diving into a report from Synovate (republished by eMarketer this morning) showing that 58% of adults worldwide don’t know “what social networking is.”

The survey of more than 13,000 people in 17 developed nations also asked if users were losing interest in social networks. According to the report, 36% said “yes,” with interest fading fastest in Japan, Slovakia, and Canada, with 45% of US users supposedly losing their appetite for social networking.

Yikes. But now for the good news. The report polled only users 18-65 in age, leaving out the teenagers that make up much of the current audience for social networks – especially the world’s two largest – Facebook and MySpace. Further, considering 58% of respondents have no idea what social networking is, the optimist says that there is still a huge untapped market.

Further, looking at penetration in individual countries where social networking usage is perceived as high – like the US and UK – less than 30% of those with regular access to the Internet are using a social networking site. Looking at other developing parts of the world like Brazil, Russia, and Mexico, penetration sits at less than 10%, indicating a potentially huge opportunity for Facebook, MySpace, Hi5, and local competitors to expand.

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I just got a quick note from FriendFeed’s Bret Taylor letting me know that the FriendFeed Beta that MG Siegler spotted the other day is officially out and ready for public consumption. The new look sports a number of new features, all of which will end up getting integrated into the default design once feedback is garnered from the userbase.

There are a lot of interesting aspects to the new layout, most of which have to do with the organization of the data into different and user-defined groups, something that partially answers an issue I brought up with FriendFeed over the weekend.

In new functionality, though, there’s the ability to upload photos with new posts to the system, allowing you to select and upload multiple files at once with no additional downloads required (just using the standard share button that’s on every page).

Probably the most useful feature in this update is the ability to define friend lists. They’re designed to enable you to organize your friends into groups.  This has long been a feature requested for services like FriendFeed and Twitter - the noise level that rises with adding new friends can interfere with the reliable communication you may have had with your close friends when you first set up your service.  Despite the trademark spartan design on FriendFeed, keeping up with hundreds of folks is surprisingly easy, but in doing so, you’ll probably notice as I did the decrease in intimacy with your core friends.

The friends lists can help remedy this, and by setting up the groups, you’ll more easily be able to scan through and get a handle on what your buddies have been up to before heading on over to the white noise that is the combined feeds of all the people you’re following.

If your goal is more noise, rather than less, you’ll probably enjoy the newfound ability to see other people’s home feeds. This can be useful for when you want to explore others’ circles of friends and assimilate them into your own collective, as you’ll be able to see your current friend’s postings in the context of all their friend’s postings.

I haven’t had long to test these features yet, but at first blush, I’d say I’m all for them. They potentially solve a lot of issues I was developing with the service, so I expect them to be widely well recieved.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:FriendFeed Gets $5M, Launches to the PublicFriendFeed Recommendations? Who Are You Likely to Like?Former Googlers Team Up to Launch FriendFeedMashable Rocks: Connect with us on FriendFeedFriendFeed Launches SearchFriendFeed for iPhone Coming - I’ve Waited For This All My LifeFriendFeed Brings Twitter Back

Source:Mashable!

Even though social network hi5 has had support for Widgetbox widgets since early July, the ability for developers to fully leverage hi5 as a network in relation to these widgets was limited to the capabilities of, well, a widget. Now, Widgetbox has teamed up with hi5 to allow access to its App Gallery for an integrated solution that allows apps built on Widgetbox to act as stand-alone applications within the hi5 network.

According to hi5, over 2 million Widgetbox widgets have been added to hi5 from its existing support, leading to more than 65,000 subscriptions to widgets. Now, any developers that would like to create an application for hi5 now have the option of creating an OpenSocial application that’s distributed on Widgetbox and through hi5 and all the other of the other social networks that have launched OpenSocial support.

This is yet another way in which developers can take extend their distribution, expanding on Widgetbox’s existing support for other platforms like Facebook as well. It allows hi5 to provide more value to its developer community, and allows Widgetbox to provide more channels through which its Application Gallery creations can be accessed. Given Widgetbox’s developments for its own advertising networks, making deals with large social networks will benefit Widgetbox and its advertisers and developers as well.

As hi5 was also among the first to support OpenSocial, and took things a step further with its own messaging API, there are a number of hi5-specific ways in which developers can further gain adoption for their applications. Got an app through Widgetbox on hi5? Let us know what you think of this new partnership.

—Related Articles at Mashable! - The Social Networking Blog:Widgetbox Launches Showcase & “Get It Now”Widgetbox Launches iPhone Widget Gallery Sans Apple’s SDKWidgetbox Showcase Offers iTunes Widget and PlaylistWidgetbox Launches App Accelerator for BeboWidgetbox Launches Gossip Widget Collection for BeboMoney-Making Facebook Apps from RockYou & WidgetboxWidgetbox Chosen by Forbes for Widget Distribution

Social network hi5 has announced that they are acquiring PixVerse. Founder Charles Ying describes PixVerse as, PixVerse is a next generation virtual world company". PixVerse has been part of the hi5 OpenSocial implementation since the beginning and was an early adopter of the Google App Engine Web platform. PixVerse was backed by Venrock. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

We will see more of these application acquisitions as the various application platforms grow. Check out hi5’s OpenSocial updates from earlier this month.

Here’s an video with Ying explaining what Pixverse is, how it works and their usage of OpenSocial:

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