Dutch Social Network Hyves celebrated its 5th million member tonight. We were there and found out that the new rock stars are Entrepreneurs.
Even the DJs play second fiddle to these guys. Check out the video, where you can see the exact moment where they reach their 5 millionth user:
And some photos:
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The party was cool, but the weather was so bad that probably 29.251 people stayed at home. It was stormy and was raining cats and dogs.
I left at 2 o’clock and had to bike home (35 minutes), when I was finally at home, my blackberry, my iPhone and all my clothes were soaked.
Next time, plan member number 10 million in the summer :)
When I came home I had wet underwear, water IN my shoes and even the money in my wallet was wet. Like taking a 30 minute shower, with your clothes on. Incredible. Fortunately I had TOO much to drink at the party and was in a very good mood…
haha you two should have been up there too. Clearly, if any Dutch web entrepreneurs are rock stars, it must be you with your trademark white tuxedos! :-)
But it was a nice party, in spite of the rain :) and the fact that I didn’t have all that much beers…
Mooi filmpje. Hahaha.. daarna zie ik Patrick nogal uit zijn dank gaan. Ik heb dus wel wat gemist.
dank = dak uiteraard
Yes Jorg, it was a GREAT party!
haha thanx. If any 2 Dutch web entrepreneurs are the new rock stars, it should be the Next Web people with their trademark white tuxedos! :-)
…
Raymond: I don’t remember being cheered at on a stage just yet. That was pretty impressive. It is one thing to have members, getting Digged or just making money but a whole other thing to be cheered at by 1000+ people like this!
Maar wat ik nou niet begrijp is waarom men het heeft over 5 miljoen gebruikers. 5 miljoen profielen zijn GEEN 5 miljoen leden. Big, BIG difference. Ik zelf heb al een 5-tal profielen, en met mij vast nog wel meer mensen. Ik denk dat 2 miljoen leden een stuk realistischer is.
And in English for the non-Dutchies:
What I don’t get is why people are talking about 5 million members. 5 million profiles are NOT 5 million members. Big, BIG difference. I myself have about 5 profiles and I’m guessing I’m not the only one. I think it’s more realistic to talk about 2 million members (which is still pretty impressive but nowhere near 5 million).
@Mike You’re totally right. not all profiles are users, but you have to measure something… and the fact that they have 5 million profiles and 100 million pageviews a day is HUGE
A lot of companies are counting and showing the number of downloads, but that is even worse.
@mike thanks
@mike: true. The profiles are very active fortunately, over 75% logs in at least monthly and over 4 million people visit Hyves every month according to comscore and STIR.
So it’s not a complete hype. :-)
@ Patrick: I agree that you have to measure something, but at least use the correct term. But I guess it’s all about keeping the bubble inflated to attract more advertisers.
@Mike: every service in the world counts registered users. So Hyves uses the same method. You could also show ‘active’ users but that would be harder. Is ‘active’ once a day or once a month? Or pageviews? Do you count unique visitors? Only from certain countries or also from obscure countries? In the end, only one thing really counts: do they make money?
@ Boris: Yes, I know how it works in the world but that doesn’t make it right. Does the term ‘wax nose’ say anything to you? ;-)
Mike, I know the term but simply don’t think it applies. It doesn’t really what you measure and how you measure it as long as its the same method that everybody else uses. With their 5 million accounts we know that they are smaller than LinkedIn but bigger than some other network. We could use stricter rules and discount for double accounts but if you would do that with both networks you would still know that one is bigger than the other.
Hyves isn’t lying or implying anything when they say they have 5 million registered users except that that is what they have; a database with 5 million registered users.
Either way, even if it would be 2 million I would still be impressed….
Maybe I’m just pissed off they never replied my business proposal…