In July 2008 Hyves announced that they had reached 7 million users, about 5 million of which were Dutch. This amounts to about a third of the entire population of The Netherlands. In 2007, the website was voted “most popular website of the year” in the “Website of the year” competition.^[2] In 2006 and 2007 Hyves also won another “Website of the year” competition in the category for blogs and communities.

Because of the popularity among young people, even politicians (among them Dutch prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende) have their own Hyve. They see this as an opportunity to come closer to the people of a younger generation. As a result of the immense growth of users, the site is regularly subjected to performance problems since the 3 million users barrier has broken. This results in incorrect working links and the slow loading of pages.

According to a study of WatchMouse published on the 11th of January 2008, Hyves now ranks among the faster social networking sites. At that time the site had over 5.5 million registered users. As of August 2009, Hyves has over 9 million registered users.

A lot of well-known Dutch people have a profile on Hyves like some politicians and singers, to promote themselves.