After today's lecture on web design and the brief discussion about the facebook.com alumni program for American college's and universities, I was reminded that I belong to a program that is pretty similar called Hi5, which is essentially the same thing as facebook.com with the only difference being that anyone can join.

I can't remember how I found the site, but it was probably through an invite, which is sent out to friends vie their own email address's and then not before to long you have joined or created your very own gated community and until today I hadn't really thought of it as a gated community. But by inviting friends and family to join the site you are essentially creating your own private sphere of friends within a public domain thus forming a gated community.

Hi5 also enforces gated private communities, because it will only connect you with people in your own network and your networks contacts, allowing you to increase your circle of friends. Personally I have used Hi5 more as a way of finding and reconnecting with people from primary and high school since we have all moved from Zimbabwe to new countries. So in a sense Hi5 has infact become an electronic and nostalgic address book, which keeps tracks of my friends and family wherever they maybe through a safe and gated online community

Link: www.hi5.com
10:54pm 19/10