Hyves

Hyves is the most popular social networking site in the Netherlands with mainly Dutch visitors and members and competes in this country with sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Hyves was founded in 2004 by Raymond Spanjar, Koen Kam, and Floris Rost van Tonningen.

In May 2010 Hyves had more than 10.3 million accounts. These correspond to two thirds of the size of the Dutch population (which stands at over 16 million in 2010), however these include multiple accounts per person and inactive accounts. The number of accounts had grown by over two million as compared to the 1.5 years earlier. Hyves can be used free of charge, but there is an option for a paid Premium Membership (called Goldmembership). Goldmembers have access to some extra features, such as the ability to use some more different smilies in their messages and more uploading-space for pictures. The creators have said that the basic form of Hyves will always be free.

Elections on Hyves

In February 2006, Wouter Bos became the first Dutch politician with a Hyves account and created a trend: then-Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende also saw the potential to communicate with his target group via social media. He became a member in 2006. During the Dutch elections of 2010, Hyves was used in a broad range of ways. Every leader of every political party had an account on Hyves, and the world’s first chat-debate between political leaders on a social network was organised and hosted by Hyves.

Features

User profiles can be created without knowledge of HTML. Profiles can be built by filling in questionnaires and uploading content.

Privacy

If someone posts personal information on Hyves, this is visible for every visitor. Therefore, Hyves thought of something to protect the Hyver from misuse: it is possible to make a profile only available for friends or friends of friends (the so-called ‘connections’, in whole or partially. You can also protect your messages- you can make them visible only for your friends or connections. The consequence of this is that you also can’t read the messages from people outside the scope of your privacy-settings

History

Hyves started in September 2004. The name Hyves was chosen because the desired domain name hives.nl was already taken. The name refers to a beehive and the fact that social networks are built the same way.

In May 2006 it became known that the Dutch police are using Hyves in their inquiries against possible suspects. Only information that is uploaded by suspects is being checked.

On December 13, 2007 Hyves was appointed the most popular site of that year.

In April 2008, Dutch media tycoon Joop van den Ende took a large interest in Hyves. The intention was to expand abroad and provide mobile services.

Hyves changed its design in July 2009. The site got a new look and feel which is more docile, synoptic and the profile pictures are a standard square shape.

In her Christmas speech of 2009, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands expressed negative views about online social networks. In response, the founder of Hyves offered her a free account/profile, so that she could experience Hyves herself.