Social Network Hi5 Shuffles Operations, Confirms Staff Layoffs

Social networking site Hi5, which focuses heavily on social gaming, has "significantly" reduced the number of staff positions at the company, laying off 28 people in the process. In a statement to technology website TechCrunch, Hi5's president Alex St. John explained that the company has shuffled its operations around and has "been able to significantly reduce the number of positions required." "In support of our market strategy to launch next generation social gaming platform by early next year, our operations team migrated the site infrastructure to the Windows Server OS," he explained. "This enabled us to consolidate servers, reduce data center costs and increase site performance... As we have recently turned the corner on our technology migration efforts we have been able to significantly reduce the number of positions required to support the older Hi5 site and are in the process of reorganizing the company to focus entirely on the development and deployment of our next generation social play site." He concluded, "The departing folks were very talented and we hated to let them go but our business is changing rapidly now. We hope that other great companies in this area snap them up quickly." He confirmed that a total of 28 staffers were laid off -- 19 full-time and 9 contractors.