Youth-oriented social network
hi5 is a social network that allows you to chat, flirt and play games with millions of other users online.
Largely aimed at the younger audience, hi5 is free to join, but requires coins to buy gifts, access the Flirt network, or play certain premium games. Coins can be earned by taking part in certain promotions, or you can buy them with real money.
Signing up with hi5 is very simple and doesn't ask you to fill in lots of information about yourself, like many other social networks do. Once you've registered you can then spend time building up your hi5 profile: creating an avatar, posting status updates, adding photos, inviting friends, etc.
Connect with people
Although there's no live chat feature on hi5, there are still plenty of ways you can interact with your Hi5 friends. You can send them a message, give them a gift and 'high 5 them' (similar to poking in Facebook). You can also create friends 'circles' in order to group your contacts.
The Flirt section of hi5 allows you to exchange chit-chat with people you might be interested in hooking up with. You can enter the age range, sex and location of people you're interested in and then flick through profiles of matches. Be warned that some of the profile pictures contain nudity, so this section isn't really suitable for under 18s.
Play free games
There's a wealth of free games available to play on hi5, ranging from puzzles to skill games, as well as other applications. You'll also find more in-depth games on the site, which can be played in exchange for coins.
Although it has a considerable user community (more than 50 million monthly visitors right now), hi5 feels a lot more sparse than Facebook. There are less groups, fan pages and the like, and many of the ones that exist don't generate much activity.
If you like flirting and playing games, you'll have fun with hi5. However, it's certainly not one of the classiest social networks around.
