Social Network Hi5 gets $20 million

[Rappy Veteran]

Social Networking world these days may seem like all-Facebook-all-the-time, but there are other social nets that are gaining traction, and are drawing interest from the venture capital community. Hi5, a San Francisco-based social networking start-up is said to have raised about $20 million in its latest round of funding. The VC firm involved in this round of funding is said to be Mohr Davidow Ventures. (Update:) The company had raised some angel funding previously, and this is company?s first institutional round.

The company co-founded by Ramu Yalamanchi, started out as a social-network-plus matrimonial site targeting the Indian diaspora, but later morphed into a social network, and since then has gained popularity in some Latin American countries, Mongolia, Tunisia and Romania. The company has about 30 million members and serves up 200 million pages a day.

If you look at this social networking map of the world, one finds that there are quite a few international-only players. Someone like Google or Yahoo should attempt a large scale consolidation - or at least that is what Hi5?s backers must be hoping for.

According to Alexa, Hi5 is now ranked as the 11th most popular site online above Facebook at 13th. If you?ve never heard of the site though, there is a reason; most of Hi5?s traffic doesn?t come from the United States. Hi5 is the No. 1 ranking site online in Portugal, Ecuador, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Guatemala, and ranks at No 2 in Jamaica, Honduras and The Dominican Republic. 16.2% of visitors to Hi5 come from Peru and 7.7% from Portugal, by comparison visitors to Hi5 from the Unites States make up only 2% of the sites traffic.

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