-Jeff Luppino-Esposito

What if there was an alternative. A chance for change. No, this isn’t a Barack Obama speech, I’m talking about a change that will help us escape from the bureaucracy of myspace and facebook, an alternative that allows you to connect with over 98 million other users in the world to share comments, pictures, and all your favorite networking features. Hold the iphones, how can this be? It may not seem possible to eclipse by conquering the other half of the Americas and continuing to compete across the globe. Surprised to hear that there are legitimate challengers to the likes of myspace and facebook? So was I, until Miguel came along....

My Argentinian friend Miguel offered to tell me a joke yesterday. I accepted with little to no expectation of laughing; it’s not that he isn’t entertaining, but usually these jokes ended with, “trust me amigo, it’s mucho funnier in Espanol” Unfortuntely, he didn’t detect my reluctant consent as he went on in broken English, “Ok, so, ok, there are two chicos in the school and they are not really amigos but they are not hating each other either, you know?” I nodded blankly. “Ok so the chico numero uno says to the other, ‘hey, I did good job on my test today, high 5 me’. So the other hombre says, ‘no way man, I don’t hi5 just anyone, only my real friends’ And then numero uno says, ‘but why, it will make me feel good on inside’. And the other says, ‘I don’t even know you man, I don’t care if you want to view the pictures on my profile to make you feel good on the inside.’ So now the chico numero uno hates him because he will not give him a high 5 even though the other chico thinks that he wants him to hi5!”

I couldn’t even pretend to laugh. I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. Luckily, 45 minutes and an online Spanish-to-English dictionary later, I finally realized that it wasn’t a poorly translated joke, but more a mockery of my own ignorance. He went on to explain how he and 98 million of his ‘friends’ had been hi5-ing while we’ve been facebooking, and my head was filled with possibilities, drowning out his spanglish explication of the oddly sexual joke. How many damn times did I swear I’d leave facebook... now was my chance, to start anew, to avoid the downfalls of losing contact while also reaping the benefits of leaving such a life-controlling network behind. And so my analytical journey begins in hopes of finding this heavenly website on a hill.

I launch at the universally accepted starting line of the internet—wikipedia. I discover that hi5 was founded in 2002 by a man named Ramu Yalamanchi, but the article is shockingly short for a website that was, “one of the 25 most visited on the web” in 2007. It’s time to get to the source—hi5 here I come.

The beautiful Latino-American-looking couple on the main page is inviting me to join their home away from home, and immediately I am getting the classic networking misconceptions of meeting ‘real people’ online. I “sign up now” and can sense a certain international vibe that facebook seems to lack. Surely there are some diversity-hungry people who would appreciate this. Nevertheless, I am pleasantly surprised to find the default country set to “United States of America”. I can’t tell you how many American-based sites recently refuse to put the US before their alphabetical nation list. It’s simply a practicality issue; if most of your viewers are from a nation, make it easy for them to say so. Enough with the self-hating political correctness.

Damn, it won’t let me use the hyphen in my last name... so much for diversity.

Still I remind myself how much I enjoy the name “hi5” (unlike the name Mitt, despite Romney’s current lead in the Nevada caucus) and how badly I need to stop facebooking, so I venture onward. With name-restraints behind me, I am in some ways excited about living through this hyphen-less alias (yes, it’s just my full name simply missing one symbol, but still there’s mystery abound). I am asked to invite my friends via gmail and I can’t help but spend the next 5 minutes thinking about how google will take (has taken) over the world in its entirety. I jump back to ‘reality’ and find that the setup is quick and simple as my editable profile begins to load. I respectfully decline the opportunity to “insert a profile picture at this time”.

I ignore what appears to be a strikingly familiar page layout and begin my info editing. In the upper left hand corner of the page sits not a blunt, suggestive blue question mark, but rather a blue-gray silhouette of a trendy, spikey-haired young man who will be standing in for my lack of image. I am very pleased with this representation.

I have total control over my status and also am given the option to create a snazzy URL for easy access to my page: http://____.hi5.com. Unfortunately, despite these few features, I can’t go on pretending much longer; this site looks almost exactly like facebook, a daunting reality for my attempts at release.

Though I can only do some individual anthropologic observations until I speak with Miguel again, I remain hopeful for the rest of my day of exploration on a site (or at least an idea) that I still want to believe can save us. If there isn’t a newsfeed, will I resist falling victim to the inherently creepy ways of facebook? Will fewer applications save me valuable time? Is it simply a positive statement in itself to use something besides FB/myspace, regardless of their similarities?

On the flip side I am skeptical; Are real-life relationships still determined by a website? Is this even more of a dating site than facebook? Is the need for public recognition and ego-boosting reminiscent of myspace?

All these answers and more shameless updates on the Nevada caucus in the next installment later today...