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Hi5 has had a growth spurt over the first half of this year, growing from 31 million to 56 million monthly active users over the first six months of the year. Like its still-larger rivals Facebook and MySpace, it has been hiring lots of senior leaders, especially on on the business side.
Before the list of hires, a little background: San Francisco, Calif.-based hi5’s largest group of users is in Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, where it competes against local sites and Facebook. Hi5 says its growth can be attributed to its long-time focus on markets outside of the U.S. It has offered customized versions of the site in Spanish and other languages for years, currently available in 27 total.
It claims to be the largest social network in 25 countries around the world. To help visualize the company’s reach, I’ve included a world map view of Google search results for hi5, by country — a correlated measure of popularity.
The hires:
Jeff Stephens: Chief financial officer, in charge of finance, human resources and administrative functions. Previously senior vice president of finance and administration as well as corporate controller at QuinStreet, Inc. and corporate controller at Sonnet Financial.
David Kim: Vice president, business development and strategy, manages partnerships, revenue initiatives and strategic planning on the business side. In his most recent position, he was a senior vice president at Harcourt Education, a division of Reed Elsevier, where he led strategy and business & corporate development and oversaw its eventual sale
Noelia Amoedo: vice president, mobile, in charge of mobile business strategy and partnerships. Previously at Buongiorno, a mobile services company, where she was the managing director of the company’s U.S. division.
Ram Gudavalli: Vice president, engineering. He has been promoted up since joining in 2004. Previously an engineer at Mixonic.
Michael Trigg : Vice president, marketing. Previously co-founder of Truviso, a real-time data analytics company, and vice president of Marketing at Spoke, a professional social networking site.
Adriana Gascoigne: Director of communications. Previously vice president of Ogilvey PR’s 360 Digital Influence division; before that, she was at Brian Solis’ FutureWorks Media.
Karen Richardson, a partner at private equity firm (and apparently hi5 investor) Silver Lake Partners, has also joined the company.
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