Hyves

Hyves is a Dutch social media and social networking site with mainly Dutch visitors and members, where it competed with sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Hyves was founded in 2004 by Raymond Spanjar and Floris Rost van Tonningen. The service is available in both Dutch and English. In May 2010, Hyves had more than 10.3 million accounts. These corresponded to two thirds of the size of the Dutch population (which stood at over 16 million in 2010), however, these included multiple accounts per person and inactive accounts. The number of accounts had grown by over two million as compared to 1.5 years earlier. Hyves could be used free of charge, but there was an option for a paid Premium Membership (called "Gold Membership"). Gold members had access to some extra features, such as the ability to use a wider variety of smileys in their messages and more uploading space for pictures. The creators have said that the basic of a Hyves account will always be free. In March 2011, Hyves was still ranked as the top social networking site in the Netherlands with 7.6 million unique visitors compared to 6.6 million for Facebook and 3.2 million for Twitter. In 2013, the social network was officially discontinued, due to the huge decrease in accounts due to the growing popularity of other social networks like Facebook and Twitter in the Netherlands. The site continued as Hyves Games, where members could use their Hyves accounts to play social games. As a social media platform, the site restarted on 22 september 2026.