How's hyve?

Last year many friends turned over from the Dutch social network website Hyves to Facebook. A major reason was the acquisition of Hyves by publisher TMG (Telegraaf Media Group). With my friends a large number of Hyvers also removed their profile. In January last year I also switched from Hyves to Facebook. Since that day I've lost sight of what is happening on this social network. Until yesterday. Yesterday Marc de Vries, CEO of Hyves visited our school for a guest-lecture. One of his comments was a warning: the fact that your friends removed their profile doesn’t mean that Hyves isn’t doing well. On the contrary, Hyves is alive and kicking. In this blog a short summary of the developments.

Tagged with: hyves, social media,

Hyves and de Telegraaf

De Telegraaf Media Group (TMG) has bought the Dutch Social media website Hyves for an undisclosed figure, rumoured to be 40 million euros .  The Telegraafs interest in the site must be relatively recent however!

Tagged with: telegraaf, social media, crossmedia, hyves,

I am Niniane Veldhoen, and I am addicted to Mafia Wars

A few months ago, I discovered the fun off facebook. I have had an account for years, but I was never active. I was a big fan of hyves, so I didn’t really need facebook. I only used facebook to keep in contact with my friends from abroad. It wasn’t until two of my colleges asked me to join their mafia gang on the social game ‘mafia wars’, that I started using facebook daily.

Tagged with: mafia wars, social games, social network sites, hyves, facebook,

Tweet

And then there was Twitter. Not less than three years ago nobody had ever heard of this typical social medium. Twitter started in 2006 and is currently enjoying unprecedented success. I have no clue how many people use this micro blog to tell their followers where they are, what they do or what they think. But reading the (printed version of a Dutch) newspaper about Twitter’s overload due to the death of Michael Jackson, it must be a huge crowd. Twitter, in its core, is truly crossmedial. You may use your mobile or your Twitter account. You might want to embed Twitter in your Facebook pages. You name it. It is a fine piece of modern communication tooling which allows us to tell the world what you’re up to. Ever since I was confronted with Twitter, I have asked myself why people – including me – actually use Twitter. Personally I’m not the type to tell the world what I am doing all the time. Maybe I’m too old for this but it requires a lot of handling, both handling of my followers and handling of my micro blogs. I have followers who send Tweets every 10 to 15 minutes and quite frankly, I don’t give a damn.

Tagged with: hyves, micro blog, facebook, crossmedia, twitter,