Remember Orkut? The famous social networking site which was taken down almost 10 years after it was found with almost 300 million user base. Orkut Büyükkökten, the founder of Orkut, has now made a comeback with another social platform named ‘Hello Network’. Unlike Orkut and Facebook, the Google ex-employee, claims that Hello will help connect users based on Passion and Interests rather than network and common friends.
Describing Hello, Büyükkökten wrote in a blog post: “Hello is the first social network built on loves, not likes. I designed hello to help you connect with people who share your passions. Fear and hatred have no place when you make such a simple and friendly gesture to someone else,”
The new App doesn’t use any external data apart from your contacts to find friends. Available on Android and iOS, Hello is primarily a photo sharing app and doesn’t allow you to post texts alone (or atleast it seems so at this point of time). You can edit the backgrounds, add text, and add filters to the images similar to Instagram.
When first opening up the app, one has to choose five ‘Personas’ based on your likings such as Photography, Animal Lover, Actor, Dancer, Foodie, Geek, Parent etc. As of now, you can only choose five personas but can swap the existing ones with new ones in case you are interested in some other area. Moreover, when posting in the app, you have to assign the post to one of the chosen Personas. Similar to Facebook’s news feed, Hello also offers a learning algorithm which can personalise your news feed based on experience and likings.
Adding a gaming touch to the application, there are also rewards in the name ‘Karma’ and you get them based on the number of times you post, comment or like. You can also send and receive gifts. This feature encourages people to use Hello even more.
Hello is currently available in three languages namely English, French and Portuguese. Moreover it is only available for Mobile platforms but is expected to make way to web soon.
Right now, there is a team of only 20 people behind this innovative social network. Interestingly, they also have a bunch of ex- Google employees. While the app is already available to download in countries like U.S, France, Australia, the U.K., Canada, New Zealand, Brazil, and Ireland, it is said that the app will come to India, Germany and Mexico later this month.