Netherlands

Hyves

Hyves is a Dutch-language social networking Website named after beehives. The users are “bees” and the social network is the “hive.” Hyves has been online since October 2004 and counted over nine million users in February 2010. The Netherlands accounts for four-fifths of its users; almost one out of two of the country's citizens have a Hyves profile. Since Hyves is only available in Dutch, the Website is most popular in the native-Dutch-speaking countries of the Netherlands and Belgium. Like many other social networking sites, the focus of Hyves is keeping in touch with existing friends and colleagues and making new friends. Also comparable with other sites, users can create personalized pages with lots of content, such as photos, videos, and custom-created layouts.

Because of the popularity among Dutch citizens in general and young people in particular, many politicians created their own Hyve. This medium created many opportunities connecting to the people of a younger generation. For example, Dutch prime minister Jan-Peter Balkenende has a Hyves account with approximately 2.5 million “friends.”

In 2006, Hyves created a subsection for its Website, called Hyves Music, in an attempt to compete with MySpace. As with MySpace, musicians are able to upload music, create their own profile, and include other media, such as pictures and videos. The fans or friends of the artist are also able to include the songs on their own profile. Hyves Music created a new music platform for Dutch-known and lesser-known artists, as well as the top lists showing the most popular artists and frequently played songs. An Artist Hyve is an account that is requested separately, since it does not limit the amount of friends on its profile, after approval.

With Hyves as the most popular social profiling and networking site in the Netherlands, others like Facebook and MySpace lag behind. However, several other Dutch social network concepts have surfaced recently. One of the most popular and unique is Sellaband.

Sellaband

Sellaband is a crowdfunding Website where people are able to invest in music artists. Although the site's business model proved to be unsustainable by February 2010, other Dutch crowdfunding sites, such as TenPages for books, are waiting to prove crowdfunding works in the digital age.

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