Mark Zuckerberg might have gone unscathed after his five-hour grilling session before the Congress but his problems don’t just stop there as a new social networking platform makes its way to the Indian market. As the Facebook CEO wakes up from his company’s backlash, a former Google employee going by the name Orkut Buyukkokten has some other plans. And yes you guessed that right. Buyukkokten was the founder of what you might remember as Orkut, a once major social platform that enjoyed its prominence a decade ago.
Making its way into the Indian market, Hello is Buyukkokten’s next project to connect with people who share the same passions in a positive, authentic and meaningful way so as to sustain a healthy social relationship. In his letter of introduction about Hello, Orkut says “I’m not so good at goodbyes, so I’m calling it hello. Hello is the next generation of Orkut, the first social network built on loves, not likes. I designed hello to help you connect with people who share your passions.”
He added by saying “Hello connects us all. Think about it: you can say “hello” in any language and people will understand. “Hello” is probably the most widely spoken word in the world after “Okay.” Aló, halo, ʾāllo, alô, hallo, alló, hello. Fear and hatred have no place when you make such a simple and friendly gesture to someone else. So come join me, and make some new friends. Say hello, and love your world.”
Buyukkokten also revealed that it had been two years since he started working on Hello having initially launched in Brazil. The social network started rolling out a beta version of its app to Indian users at the start of this year, closing in on as much as 35,000 users already in the matter of a quarter. The Orkut founder also took a dig at Facebook saying Hello does not generate revenues by selling chunks of user data to anyone and also revealed that no user info is shared with third-party apps.
Hello is currently available in the App Store and Google Play for downloads on iOS and Android devices. Hello looks to set up base in India before moving on to rolling the social networking service to other parts of the world including Germany and France.