November 16, 2013

Dutch social network Hyves quits, offers users chance to download data

Filed under: Technology by Branko Collin @ 2:20 pm

Popular Dutch social network Hyves will stop operations on 2 December, Parool reported last month.

Although the paper doesn’t mention why the site is shutting down, it’s likely because Hyves was haemorrhaging visitors to Facebook, which offers a similar experience but to an international audience. The international ambitions of Hyves can presumably best be summed up by its name, which is the English word (spelled slightly different) for a skin rash. Marketing Facts reported in March 2012 that Hyves led Facebook by almost 3 million unique Dutch visitors in December 2010. Twelve months later that number was reversed. (The Netherlands has approximately 16 million inhabitants, 10 million of whom were Hyves members at the site’s peak .)

Starting today Hyves allows users to download the photos, videos, messages and so on that they left on the site. The download window is only two weeks. Parool further reports that the Hyves servers currently hold over 1 petabyte in data. Although Hyves will stop as a general social network, it will try and continue as a gaming website.

Update 17 November 2013: Volkskrant reports that Dutch people in their late teens are abandoning Facebook in droves. Of those aged 16 – 19 who had a Facebook account last year, 52% had abandoned their account by this year. On the whole Facebook is still growing though. Volkskrant suspects young people simply do not want to share a network with older relatives.

(Photo of a bus stop ad by Patrick Nielsen Hayden showing how in 2009 Hyves was considered the prime application of a smart phone, some rights reserved)

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May 31, 2010

More people in prison on suspicion than after conviction

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 8:28 am

Law professor Yvo Buruma has sounded the alarm about the number of innocent people being detained pre-trial in the Netherlands.

According to Buruma the numbers of acquittals in the country has risen from 4.5% to 7% in the past five years. More people are in gaol awaiting trial than people who have already been convicted.

In a blog entry last week Buruma claims this is a worrisome development because robbing somebody of their freedom is an exceptional power that the state should only exercise under exceptional circumstances, and because a person should be considered innocent until proven otherwise. Although he does not outright say it, it would almost seem that the justice department is keeping people imprisoned for the wrong reasons.

The criminal law professor at the Radboud University Nijmegen determines four categories of aquittal:

  1. It is unclear what happened,
  2. It is unclear what part the suspect played,
  3. There was no intent, and
  4. The judge fails to see the crime in the accused’s actions.

An example of the latter is the 14-year-old who jokingly told Prime Minister Balkenende on the social networking site Hyves that he was going to die and was acquitted earlier this month.

It is perhaps interesting to note that the falsely imprisoned typically only receive 80 euro a day in damages, regardless of actual income lost.

Link: Sargasso.

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March 9, 2009

Stijn Peeters draws his friends

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 10:02 am

Stijn Peeters draws his friends from Myspace-like Dutch social network Hyves, and publishes the results there.

Via Trendbeheer (Dutch).

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December 6, 2007

Hyves.net throws party for 30,000 people

Filed under: Dutch first,Online by Orangemaster @ 4:21 pm

Thenextweb.org writes:

Sure, discussions about the Web 2.0 bubble are here to stay. Sometimes however, a social network proves the critics wrong. For example, the Dutch equivalent of Facebook, Hyves.net, is welcoming its fifth million user today. Four million users are Dutch (well, not me – where did they get that?), which is huge considering that the Netherlands has a population of 16 million. That’s absolutely true.

To celebrate the occasion, Hyves is throwing a party in Amsterdam. The location has space for 800 ‘Hyvers’ to party with the crew.

And this is the amazing part: more than 30,000 members asked to be on the guest list! What an active network! If so many members want to party with each other in real life, Hyves must have some value.

(Link: thenextweb.org, Illustration: sevensheaven.nl)

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May 5, 2007

Find it yourself

Filed under: Food & Drink,General by Orangemaster @ 11:15 am
toothpicks1.jpg

The employees of Dutch supermarket C-1000 have compiled a list of the items that are the most difficult to find in their supermarkets and placed it on their hyve, according to personnel magazine, Club1000. Interestingly enough, in most stores, the same products are difficult to find.

Top 5:
1. Cocktail toothpicks
2. Toasts
3. Salt
4. Corn Starch
5. Eggs

A note to foreigners:
1. There are no signs in Dutch stores to give you a general idea of where products can be found.
2. If you ask the staff, they point, but won’t bring you to the product (In North America, they are taught to bring you to the product – it increases the chance of a sale).
3. Every store of the same chain has a different layout, as buildings differ greatly.
4. And stores stock up during opening hours (!), especially on Saturday when it’s busy, and cannot be bothered to help you then.

In a C1000 in Delft, I found sardines with the Indonesian products. Why? Because the sardines were from outside the EU. The ‘normal’ sardines were from Britain with the tuna and salmon, but the ones I found were from Canada. Very logical.

(Link: zibb.nl)

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