Small funding, for a social network: Hi5 raises $15 million in venture debt
Hi5, the social network that’s popular in Latin America and other parts of the world, has raised $15 million in venture debt from Hercules Technology Growth Capital.
This is a small amount compared to larger rival Facebook’s $240 million strategic investment from Microsoft last fall, although Hi5 did just raise $20 million in July (our coverage).
San Francisco-based Hi5 is apparently looking to build out country-specific features, as it faces increased competition from Myspace, Facebook and local social networks. It has been working on a developer platform, that includes an already-available application from music service iLike (our coverage). It is also part of Google’s Open Social initiative, which is designed to let third party developers easily place their applications on multiple social networks.
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About the Author, Eric Eldon
Eric currently covers digital media technology and business news, especially what's happening on social networks and their platforms. He also writes and edits stories about venture capital, and lots of other stuff, too. He started at VentureBeat in the spring of 2007, half a year or so after Matt Marshall left his reporting job at the San Jose Mercury News to found the site. Eric previously cofounded a startup called Writewith, that was building editorial software for newspapers and other groups of writers. The startup didn't work out, but he learned a lot.