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.