Facebook is expected to announce Wednesday that it has crossed the 500-million user mark. Rival social network Hi5, with just 40 million users of its social network, is puny by comparison. But Alex St. John, president and chief technology officer of Hi5, tried his hardest tonight to upstage his gigantic rival just before its big occasion.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":200169,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"business,games,media,","session":"A"}']Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, better be on his guard. Clearly, St. John will do anything — talk the loudest, crack the most jokes, or pull the wackiest stunts — just to steal a little attention for Hi5, which is at the show trying to recruit game developers to its social network.
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Perhaps Hi5 and its cigar-chomping president doesn’t stand a chance. You could reasonably expect that St. John is going to get squashed as he tries to take on the 800-pound gorilla. But it is certainly succeeding in making the social game business more entertaining and taking its marketing gimmicks to places where Facebook won’t go. In that way, the company reminds me of the loud-mouthed Scott McNealy and his one-time upstart server company Sun Microsystems, now owned by Oracle. McNealy knew that he didn’t have the dollars to spend on marketing or advertising, so he had to use his witty remarks and antics to get attention. You have to hand it to St. John. He will do anything to help his company, as you can see below. The second video from Hi5 provides the “back story” for the sumo wrestling match.
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