Wait, so the guy's name means orgasms? Oh dear oh dear. This must cause problems for Turkish men in Finland. Kind of like the unfortunate Indian family name Dikshit.
AFAIK it might be more common than you think. I have a female friend who's firstname is Fanny and another one who's lastname is Cocq. They both expect a few laugh when they introduce themselves in english speaking countries.
Most English speakers would not know that the sound of 'c' in the Turkish alphabet is closer to the 'j' in 'joy'. The presence of the alphabet 'ç' also adds to more confusion.
The 'kut' part in 'orkut' means pussy (as in vagina) in Dutch. It was always clear to me from the get go why orkut wouldn't succeed in the Netherlands.
I thought just the other day "if only there was another social network I could use instead of Facebook (and convince my friends to join it)...", so seeing there's a new social network by the guy who made Orkut sounded like good news.
However, from the website, I'm not sure "connect with people and content around your passions" is what I want. I'll wait and see how this pans out.
To compete with FB you need to launch on day 1 with all of FB's major features. This is the mistake G+ made. Who cares about a social network with no Events for example?
It does, annoying when I posted an article titled "iOS ...". But you can edit the title after submission and the change will stick (that is, they only alter it on submission, not on edit).
Not my intention to bikeshedding but I think it is possible to change the configuration so the server has a valid certificate for Orkut.com and not just for hello.com
Bold move to launch it without a web frontend. I browsed the 'best of' gallery which looks nice, but I haven't seen anything yet that would entice me to grab my phone and go through both a sign up and an app installation process.
From the outside it looks like a Reddit meets Imgur type of application, perhaps like Pinterest. None of those have really strong communities in my opinion, not as strong as for example Facebook friends are. How are the community members connected to eachother?
Based on nothing more than 30seconds looking at the page, it seems to be attempting to connect strangers via common interests than by being a facebook clone which connects already established friends.
Orkut was our go-to social network as teens, before we all moved to Facebook in 2009. I'm was going to join this out of sheer nostalgia, but it appears to be lacking a web app.
I'm curious as to why they went with ONLY native Android / iOS apps. That will not only drive away people like me, who prefer to use things from a desktop web browser, but also people in developing countries who might not have access to a smartphone. That sounds like straying away from "I want to help connect people" to something more like "I want to help connect people who own an Android / iOS device".
People use mobile more than desktop on social apps so it makes a lot of sense. Eventually there will be a web/desktop version as well(if it catches on). Shortly said mobile web sucks so a native app is better than a broken website.
Doesn't it suck for anything but simplest forms of communication?
I mean, I just can't stand touch-typing anything but very short messages. Whenever there's any conversation that involves more typing than posting a meme picture and replying with "lol" I run for a real terminal, with a real physical keyboard.
I don't know about others, but for me being significantly slowed down with typing is frustrating. And I hope to believe I'm not an outstandingly slow with touchscreen keyboards...
>> "I don't know about others, but for me being significantly slowed down with typing is frustrating. And I hope to believe I'm not an outstandingly slow with touchscreen keyboards..."
Just anecdotally watching people type I think that the general consumer who isn't typing on a real keyboard all day, is actually much quicker on a phone. Look at teenagers - they spend much of their day communicating on a phone hence they get quite good at typing on it. I'm shocked at how quickly a lot of people I know reply to me from their phone. So I don't think it's that you are outstandingly slow, just that you and I spend a lot of time using real keyboards so we can use them efficiently and a lot of other people spend most of their time using touch keyboards and can use them more efficiently than us.
Mobile app means access (due to broken permission systems) to a user's contact, location, mic and camera. Also, captive web browser (user clicks a web link and that web page gets shown inside the app, instead of on the phone's own browser) means the app can track what sites you visit and for how long ("Dear buzzfeed.com, would you like to buy our stats for visits to your website?").
Services are becoming more and more "Mobile first" in recent times.
I do appreciate the importance of optimizing for mobile as a priority but share your sentiment in the poor experience left for those who us who actually like to use our laptops/desktops for some activities.
Watch the trend reverse once form factors that are both portable and usable as primary workstations (for light work) become the norm (like MS and Ubuntu's vision of a phone that can become your laptop in a dock)
Native app first is the problem, not mobile first.
Web apps designed for mobile first often give you a better desktop experience. Designers making a desktop web app feel obligated to fill the screen with stuff to make it clear that they did a lot of work. But if they start with mobile it stays focused on what's important. Additional interface element for desktop end up as actual enhancements instead of distractions.
> people in developing countries who might not have access to a smartphone
I live across a river from Burma, and I can tell you it's at least an order of magnitude easier for people there to get access to a smartphone than a desktop or laptop.
I mean, I agree that it's a deal-killer for people like you and me, but the idea that it would make it less suitable for underdeveloped countries is just silly.
I live in a first-world country, I do have an Android phone, but I'm always out of internal storage and need to delete apps. Most people in my friends/family circle are in the same situation. So even if we have Android, services based exclusively on mobile apps have an accessibility problem for us. I suppose this problem will be larger in places like Burma, where smartphones will be cheaper and older on average.
Mine also has one, but the apps just don't want to go there. In fact, some apps like spotify insist on storing even their data in the internal storage. So I have a full internal storage and an almost empty big SD card. I know these things can be solvable via rooting, but most people doesn't root.
I was really frustrated by this for a while. There were some instructions on the Spotify website about re-installing the app when the SD card was plugged in, but it never seemed to work for me.
Recently they added the ability to explicitly choose where you want to store your offline data.
> people in developing countries who might not have access to a smartphone
People in such countries are actually more likely to have access to a smartphone, specifically one of the myriad cheap Android devices one finds all over the world, than to a desktop web browser.
Based on the size of the app and the interface, it's not native but some sort of webapp bundled with it's engine which means they could have done a mobile website, but my guess is that they know that if they do this no one will download the app atm.
Wow, talk about a nice benefit! I wonder if he had to pay taxes on its potential value? I'll take my stock options in small unmarked domain names, please.
Maybe I'm just being cynical, but I see a large dissonance between this message and the 'hello' presentation.
He laments that "we stay with locals when we travel abroad but we don't even know our neighbours at home", yet the new social network seems to push more in that direction (it talks about connecting people based on their interests, not their proximity). He says "we are afraid of what we don't know [...] we are hateful toward what we don't understand", but hello's "folio" feature seems to dig in on that by carefully filtering out what's not "relevant to your interests".
And then there's the gamification ("leaderboards, milestones & rewards") which to me at least seem prone to encourage empty activities that don't really help with the loneliness mentioned in the message.
Because guess what, the letter is just a promotion for this new social network that they hope to sell everybody on. It doesn't matter if he really cares about any of those things, only that we think that he cares about those things and then go use his social network and divulge our private lives to yet another foreign entity.
No, I read it exactly the same way - I guess the problem is that we probably need something paradoxical - we want to connect to things we know, but also to new things, people, places and experiences. But when we want them - otherwise they're an inconvenience.
I think just talking to people you meet at random will probably be a better solution.
It's much more likely that you'll be murdered by someone you have a close realtion with.
(Apart from being a bit snarky, it's also true, and leads (back) to:)
> I think just talking to people you meet at random will probably be a better solution.
It is. (Speaking from experience)
That said, one also get to know people online - from irc to games. I don't see any reason why a new "meet strangers" social network couldn't work. But if a majority of its users can't motivate themselves to talk to random people they meet - chances are the network will be coopted for some other agenda than "making new friends". Like "have more one night stands". And while sex is a healthy human activity, meeting people with the aim to become friends need a form of level playing field, and mutual intention.
Fighting off one unwelcome sexual advance every now and then is part of the human condition - but having to do it every time you "meet" someone, it gets old really fast.
Which is probably one reason people can meet in games: while people game for many aspects of gaming - most do it to relax and have fun.
Orkut was produced by him under Google as an employee. Now he's trying to run with it again even though the whole thing is gamified and the letter is an ingenious as it gets. My guess is that he got a kickback to advertise and be the figurehead for someone elses shitty new social network. I would not be surprised if some celebs get paid off to start advertising it.
Being hopeful is asking people to change, or at the very least give a thought to changing, sacrificing, open-minded to people who you don't like, etc. Making money is about keeping people happy which goes against the message.
The social network that forces people to interact with "the other" is one destined for failure.
People don't need more connectivity. Excess of anything is bad. Social networks and connectivity is already in the realm of being evil and eating away all the time from people's lives.
Is there a single company outside Facebook that actually makes money this way? Seems like a complete myth like the idea that Google "sells your personal information".
I'm echoing what others are saying: no web version means I won't bother at all.
My phone has access to multiple great browsers. Building a good lightweight web app means I can access the content from anywhere without having to deal with annoyances of push notifications or (as much) creepy tracking.
My favorite example of a mobile web app is currently Twitter Mobile [0]. I even like using it from my desktop. It's very lightweight, fast, and easy to read.
Is there a way to run Android apps in a VM on Linux?
A VM for phone applications would be similar to a browser. A browser runs websites in a safe environment. A way to run apps in a safe environment would be nice.
Look at Genymotion, I'm using it on Ubuntu 16.04 to test Telegram and Messenger bots without having to do it on my phone. There are some hops to go through to install Google Play but they are documented. I'll post some links when I go back to my computer with my notes.
However the filetrip link didn't work (and I don't know if I want to trust it) and the google apps failed to install. I googled and eventually downloaded these files:
Many. I've used Android-x86(.org) on KVM which worked so well I didn't pursue others. There is some semi-commercial fork called Remix OS that's more polished.
If you only need to use an app and not the rest of the environment you can also run it as a Chrome plugin under ARC and not mess with virtualization at all.
There are multiple ways to run phone apps in a VM on Linux. If you just want to try something, the quickest would be to download Android Studio or Eclipse and use the built-in VM meant for development.
I have no idea who they think they're targeting but there's still a huge amount of friction involved in getting users to install an app. I don't think that a younger audience is immune to that.
Instagram and Snapchat made names for themselves by being novel, simple, immediate... You can explain in one sentence to your friends what's cool about them: "you can make your photos look great and see your friend's photos" and "you send quick selfies and they're deleted in like ten seconds so you don't have to care so much".
This hello.com seems like a much broader kind of "social network" that I would have a hard time getting any of my friends or family to try, I think.
I still remember the time around ten years ago when a lot of people had independent blogs mostly free of clickbait and advertising. Nowadays, many post on social media only.
In networked software, to be federated means users are able to send messages from one independent deployment to the other. In WordPress, this is achieved using linkbacks and feeds. So how would you define federation?
After Gravatars, I figured they'd try to disrupt Facebook with some kind of P2P plugin, like a Fidonet. But it never happened. Instead we got Disqus and IntenseDebate and bbPress...
RSS can be considered a federated protocol, maybe...if you stretch the definition.
With RSS, you can subscribe to feeds with any standard reader. Interestingly enough, YouTube channels all have RSS feeds, so you can subscribe to them without needing to do so via a Google account.
I wrote nearly the same thing last week. "I remember meritocracy, I remember trackbacks..." HN definitely helps to amplify the independent WP blogs' news. I was thinking, maybe there's a way to do P2P ranking/voting/tagging of headlines just using JavaScript, maybe it's an embed code, and that could disrupt Twitter in terms of surfacing important news items without censorship. But how scary would it turn out without censorship?
If the concept here is a social network which brings us closer to people who have similar interests and are geographically close to us then that is really cool. But a couple things don't feel right to me.
1) No web app - honestly I'm over installing apps and being bound to my phone. You lost me here.
2) A bit of 'wall of text' explaining what this is and I appreciate that the orkut.com bit is heartfelt, but this is not the best way to pull me in.
3) No actual content from the network that I can browse on the web to understand through immersion (this is what is needed instead of or to supplement the about text).
4) 'loves not likes' - Without delivering on the other bullets here I didn't connect with the product and therefore this sounded tacky.
5) The best of the jots - makes me feel maybe this is instagram?
It just feels that the product planner is checked out or there hasn't been much conversation with the market or something. I guess I'd understand a lot better if I installed the app and signed up, but not going to, I shouldn't have to jump through those hoops just to understand the product.
Admittedly I am just an average curious passerby with a short attention span here so my $0.02 is worth just that, $0.02. But hello.com could be onboarding people a lot more effectively in my opinion.
Hate to just parrot everyone else but having no web app is the root of all of these issues I think.
Orkut was great and I'm over FB/Twitter, hope this does well.
Re #2, consider that hello.com is the landing page for the app. The page linked here is a page with a different purpose that most potential users won't see.
You may like www.tagschat.com, it is the same concept, but web based. I am the founder and we are releasing the new version (exiting beta) in a few days: stay tuned! Meanwhile, you can subscribe!
I've had this sentiment for a couple years now. I'm so sick of having to download an app for everything. I want a slick web version that isn't half-assed, and is responsive to all devices. This is my number one priority building any new application.
I haven't a smart phone, but I did try Win 10, and have a Win 8.1 machine kicking about. I don't use either much. But what I do struggle with, is finding apps. Under Linux, my Applications Menu at least groups by category, and makes it a bit easier for me to find something even if I have forgotten the name. On Win 10 I'm totally lost.
I'd fear I'd have a whole heap of apps, and have no idea what they are or how to get to them.
In some ways it's the same with websites! I guess I could tag them or add them to a bookmark folder or something.
Exactly. You know what works for me to find "apps", the ubiquitous search engine. That should bring me to the web version of whatever you're selling me. If I feel it warrants enough to install another silly app, then maybe I will. But for now, the web version better be easily found, and full featured.
I know a few people that never install apps on their phones. Because they have no clue re: security, whether the app has access to this or that or whatever.
I spoke to a family member and he says to me I've got this bus app for route X. And I say what, you've got an app for your local bus route, and he says yes. I then asked what was wrong with the website?
Same here. There is often no functional difference between a shortcut (from your homescreen) to the mobile website and the official app, so that's what I do. Goodbye cluttering downloads, permission systems, etc. It will need to load a few kilobytes of javascript extra upon every use (if caching doesn't solve that already), but I think that's totally worth it.
> I'm so sick of having to download an app for everything.
Me too. BTW I think I'd be fine if the apps just downloaded themselves (assuming they're vetted and signed by the app store), and without occupying space on my phone-top (or whatever its called). I don't really need to know the difference between an app and the browser - for as long as it does its thing.
Yes! Absolutely! The worst thing is when you're on a site and you're browsing it and something pops up saying something along the lines of "Click here to get our app!" or it overlays the screen and tells you to use the app. NO I don't WANT your app. I'm on your WEBSITE. If you made THAT usable and didn't try to interfere with the stupid app, I'd be set!
I am same as you. Downloading an app for something which can be done in a browser annoys me a lot. Being in programming, many of my friends show similar behaviour.
But I think for non technical people, apps are main way to use mobile devices. For example, I got married recently. My wife is a doctor. She uses iPad for personal computing. She tries to find the app for everything she wants to do on her iPad. In fact she uses Google app on her iPad a lot. Want to search something, start the Google app. I was surprised to see this. I tried to tell her that she can search straight from her Chrome browser. But I think it's matter of habit for her now and still prefers to use the Google App for search.
I'm out as well due to the lack of a web version, although not exactly for the same particular reasons as you. I'm OK with native apps in my phone, but (1) I refuse the need to look at a small screen and type on a crapy on-screen keyboard when I'm sitting in front of my PC with large screen and keyboard like 10 hours a day, and (2) my Android phone with 16G internal storage has long ran out of storage for apps (the stupid inflexibility of the system and many apps refusing to go to the SD card plays a role here) and I'm already keeping to the strictly necessary, there are apps that I actually liked and used but I had to delete them.
There are plenty of reasons to not want to use a mobile-only social network. I really like the concept of meeting new people based on interests (it's something I've been missing since ICQ, which had that functionality, was replaced with inferior alternatives like MSN messenger) but there's no way I'm getting into this mobile-only train for applications that don't have any reason to be mobile only.
That is the one thing I absolutely hate about Amazon's Alexa app. They have a super-fast browser version that, to date, has executed everything flawlessly for me with speed and precision. Then there's the native Android app - a slow, clunky, POS (when it even starts properly - usually after 30 seconds of watching a spinning circle icon). But hey, guess what? Trying to access the great browser version from your 1080p mobile device with a fully capable web browser? NOPE! Just a button to download the POS native app. Really, Amazon, I expected better.
They are building a web version, they're just doing mobile first. And that may be a pretty smart move.
"You will work with our product designers, mobile engineers, and backend engineers to create a distinct web version of our mobile offering." (http://www.hello.com/en/jobs/)
Orkut was global, and in a global context, mobile devices may be more heavily used than laptop / desktop web.
"Smartphone ownership rates have skyrocketed in many countries since 2013. This includes increases of over 25 percentage points among the total population in large emerging economies such as Turkey (+42 points), Malaysia (+34), Chile (+26) and Brazil (+26)."
Even in the US, I see all the kids with mobile devices and controlled internet access. If you're shooting for the next generation of people, e.g., the young'uns, then mobile first is probably critical.
You're right, but "Mobile first" is the way they are describing themselves, it's the phrase used in the jobs link I posted. And I would personally interpret "mobile first" to imply native apps in just about any context, so I think it gets the point across.
I would personally interpret "mobile first" to imply native apps in just about any context
You're part of a growing minority who interprets it that way. Google search results for "mobile first" are still very web-focused today, but I'm concerned the native app community will usurp that phrase, confusing everybody.
And while I'm speaking for the web community, apologies for usurping the word "responsive" and confusing everybody.
I still prefer native apps when they're well-designed. A well-designed, minimal native app almost always performs better than a well-designed, minimal mobile website in my experience. But a lot of major apps have become so bloated that their mobile website versions work better. Twitter is one example, but Facebook is another infamous one. I'm sure many folks on HN have went through the experience of realizing that it was the FB app that was draining their smartphone battery like crazy.
That said, the lack of a website is still a dealbreaker for me in this case. I don't want to have to access a social network through my phone. I do understanding going mobile-first on a new social network, but I'm not really interested in jumping aboard until I can use it from my laptop/desktop. But that may not mean much in terms of the app's success. I'm probably just not in the target audience.
Why would a web version be better than an app if you're using it on a phone? (Honest question, I'm just curious.) Most people say they dislike app clutter, but then they have to keep a browser bookmark (or bookmark icon) anyway, which is the same amount of clutter. The only reason I can see is that you'd have one less app annoying you with updates, but a browser version has its own set of problems--e.g. unreliable maintenance of state, inconsistencies between browsers, random breakages due to ad blockers kicking in, etc...
Apps have access to things on your phone that web pages do not. Like he mentioned, web pages can't send push notifications. To the best of my knowledge, web pages can't run in the background. Web pages will also work on any device, even Windows Phone or Firefox OS or WebOS or Blackberry, etc.
I don't have the Facebook app installed on my phone. Not for privacy reasons, not because the web page is better, but because the Facebook app was taking up over 300mb of my 16gb phone, and the only way I knew to get that space back was deleting the app. With a web page, I can get rid of all of its stored data and still be able to access the site.
Steve Jobs was right, even if he was a bit early in his predictions. Web pages are better than apps in a lot of situations. Facebook doesn't need to be an app. Hello doesn't need to be an app. They just need good responsive web pages.
I think you're missing my point. It doesn't matter if Firefox supports it, Safari on my iPhone does not. Native apps do support all of these annoying features.
Let me give you an example. The official reddit app on my phone asks me maybe two or three times per week "Please enable push notifications". No. I don't want to do that. And I can't seem to get it to stop asking me. But on the website, in my browser, it's never asked me that. Because it can't. It's not allowed to. I'm not talking "is it technically possible from a pure theoretical standpoint", I mean in practice, is it physically possible for a web page on my iPhone to send push notifications and tear up my battery in the background? And I'm pretty sure the answer is "no". And that makes me very happy.
Typing on my phone sucks. OK for reading. Sucks for typing. And half the time my phone is busy charging because I drained the battery. And my data plan sucks. And a desktop/laptop has plenty of storage. But mostly, typing on phone sucks.
When I close the tab on my mobile browser I know it's over. When I install an app I know it can notify me at any time and decide it needs my attention. I don't want that.
I almost never bookmark on my phone. And I very rarely bookmark on my pc(except for minimal hot toolbar on 'new page'). Either it's good enough I can type in 1-3 letters and it appears via recent appear or I forget about it because it didn't provide enough value. E. G. Whenever I visit this site I just type n then enter because I frequent it enough and browser maintains this. But other sites fall off my radar. I deem them not worthy. Also when I do ok occasion bookmark(I never look at my bookmarks,excdpt when doing a transfer to new machine or phone and I wonder what all these bookmarks are for and I click a few. Then realizing if site is alive that it holds little to no value or interest for me anymore)
In addition I minimize apps downloads(loss of info, clutter, etc..)
I would reckon you're definitely in the minority. Think of an app like Snapchat - huge number of users who couldn't care less about the lack of a web app.
Instagram has a web app, but I'd be curious to see how many users actually utilise it, in comparison to mobile app users. My guess is that mobile app users heavily outweigh web users. Instagram also chose to offer a restricted set of features on the web app, specifically to encourage using the mobile app.
That's not to say that a web app is unnecessary. I reckon that the number of web users for an app like Instagram is sufficient to warrant the existence and maintenance of a web app. But I think that the majority of social network consumers are not concerned either way, and to delay a release because the web app is still being developed would be a mistake.
Twitter Mobile is horrible. It's bloated, it frequently crashes my browser, it tries to do autocomplete of @handles but is slower than my touchscreen typing. In fact, Twitter Mobile is so bad that I'm considering installing an app to replace it.
Really? The new mobile Twitter site is super fast and reliable on my phone. The native app is still better but it gets really close in terms of performance and usability. However apps still have better OS integrations (notifications, sharing) and touch handling (swipe etc).
Really? It doesn't like my phone. And every time the train enters a tunnel, Twitter tells me my connexion is unavailable and ruins whatever I was doing at the time.
A lot of web applications perform really poorly on mobile and apps are made for that nice 'native' feeling. You also don't get push notifications or badges on the home screen. Mobile sites work for news sites and blogs, where you poll for content at your will, but for interactive applications, a mobile application that notifies you of interaction is a must in my opinion.
Have you heard about Progressive Web Apps? They are bringing all those things you mention to the table: push notifications, background sync, offline access, home screen badge...
>I'm echoing what others are saying: no web version means I won't bother at all.
Good choice, I've just tried their Android version and it's absolute bug-city to the extent that I'm unsure if they engaged in any real Android user testing / dog fooding at all.
In onboarding, the crop function simply did not work at all, showing a hyper-zoomed version of the image and then discarding the view when creating the final image.
In onboarding, twice (in three minutes total of usage) I was presented with a totally white screen. No UI. No back button functionality. Nothing on screen. Nothing to do. Only option: force close the app. It appears to happen after EVERY single step in onboarding is complete. Once after photo/basic profile, once after location.
Yes, I was required to force close the app _twice_ in three minutes of usage.
Criticism: Only 5 "personas"? Really? I was forced to unselect a number subjects very dear to me because apparently I'm too diverse for a social network????
And now the "join personas" button is failing, it attempts to bring up the onboarding menu but fails, dropping back to the already-completed personas menu over and over. I'll force close the app myself.
If you wanted free QA, you could have at least been honest with us about this being a total beta test. I wonder if the developers are in this thread. I bet they all use iPhone...
But since this is apparently released software, as a tester and developer myself I am deeply concerned with the state of your backend, based on the quality of your front end development.
The gamification seems really unnecessary for a social network. It may improve retention rates, but only for a very small demographic (that I'm definitely not a part of).
The consensus in the comments seems to be that there are some other bad decisions that went into it too...
In the new version of Tagschat.com (same concept, web-based) you won't have gamification, but only endorsements by whom recognize your knowledge in the field of your interest.
Getting a certificate error here. I'm using HTTPS Everywhere. So I assume they didn't anticipate people using the HTTPS version of the site, and misconfigured it?
Yikes, crashed during registration, then after restarting it wouldn't let me upload a square profile picture (blocking progress on the crop screen), then once I took another picture it gave me a "Backend error" on the next screen, once again blocking progress. I give up. I hate to be negative, and I usually would cut a new app some slack, but the whole reason I am trying this is that I expected a high level of quality given the background of the founder.
Yeah, I am always hesitant to give my phone number, but I had enough trust in this app since the founder had a solid background. I don't often give up that info. I regret that I did now...
Crashed 3 times on android before I could complete the registration.
UI needs work, if they add more countries they can not expect me the scroll down a list of 200+ items to find my phone country prefix. Just let me enter it.
For some reason on some pages the hamburger menu button is an actual hamburger while on other activities it is the standard 3 lines. I wonder if that is on purpose or a mistake.
A. Major bummer I can only use a mobile device. First choice for this sort of thing is my desktop/PC.
B. I had a lot of issues signing up. White screens of death, inability to progress further. Had to restart the app no less than 4 times to complete registration.
C. Now that I am registered, I see a "Welcome to your folio" screen that doesn't let me do anything.
I love how confident people seem to be that this won't be successful (the truth is I'm still shocked that airbed and breakfast was so popular ;-D). I for one don't mind a gamified version of Facebook that's about real world interaction.
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[ 6.1 ms ] story [ 279 ms ] threadThis has a totally different meaning in finnish as orkut means "orgasms" in casual speak.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_alphabet#Sounds
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockburn_Street,_Edinburgh
(Also the Cockburn Association.)
[1] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Flikker
However, from the website, I'm not sure "connect with people and content around your passions" is what I want. I'll wait and see how this pans out.
I can see those bogging-down like the genetic Twitter hash-tags. Can you imagine trying to follow #photography?
To compete with FB you need to launch on day 1 with all of FB's major features. This is the mistake G+ made. Who cares about a social network with no Events for example?
From the outside it looks like a Reddit meets Imgur type of application, perhaps like Pinterest. None of those have really strong communities in my opinion, not as strong as for example Facebook friends are. How are the community members connected to eachother?
Good question, is it tied to phone number or email adress?
I wish someone would do the social network that is crossbred between indieweb and diaspora/friendica, that would seem like the way forward at least.
I'm curious as to why they went with ONLY native Android / iOS apps. That will not only drive away people like me, who prefer to use things from a desktop web browser, but also people in developing countries who might not have access to a smartphone. That sounds like straying away from "I want to help connect people" to something more like "I want to help connect people who own an Android / iOS device".
I mean, I just can't stand touch-typing anything but very short messages. Whenever there's any conversation that involves more typing than posting a meme picture and replying with "lol" I run for a real terminal, with a real physical keyboard.
I don't know about others, but for me being significantly slowed down with typing is frustrating. And I hope to believe I'm not an outstandingly slow with touchscreen keyboards...
Just anecdotally watching people type I think that the general consumer who isn't typing on a real keyboard all day, is actually much quicker on a phone. Look at teenagers - they spend much of their day communicating on a phone hence they get quite good at typing on it. I'm shocked at how quickly a lot of people I know reply to me from their phone. So I don't think it's that you are outstandingly slow, just that you and I spend a lot of time using real keyboards so we can use them efficiently and a lot of other people spend most of their time using touch keyboards and can use them more efficiently than us.
I do appreciate the importance of optimizing for mobile as a priority but share your sentiment in the poor experience left for those who us who actually like to use our laptops/desktops for some activities.
Watch the trend reverse once form factors that are both portable and usable as primary workstations (for light work) become the norm (like MS and Ubuntu's vision of a phone that can become your laptop in a dock)
Web apps designed for mobile first often give you a better desktop experience. Designers making a desktop web app feel obligated to fill the screen with stuff to make it clear that they did a lot of work. But if they start with mobile it stays focused on what's important. Additional interface element for desktop end up as actual enhancements instead of distractions.
I live across a river from Burma, and I can tell you it's at least an order of magnitude easier for people there to get access to a smartphone than a desktop or laptop.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/01/the-fa...
I mean, I agree that it's a deal-killer for people like you and me, but the idea that it would make it less suitable for underdeveloped countries is just silly.
Recently they added the ability to explicitly choose where you want to store your offline data.
People in such countries are actually more likely to have access to a smartphone, specifically one of the myriad cheap Android devices one finds all over the world, than to a desktop web browser.
He laments that "we stay with locals when we travel abroad but we don't even know our neighbours at home", yet the new social network seems to push more in that direction (it talks about connecting people based on their interests, not their proximity). He says "we are afraid of what we don't know [...] we are hateful toward what we don't understand", but hello's "folio" feature seems to dig in on that by carefully filtering out what's not "relevant to your interests".
And then there's the gamification ("leaderboards, milestones & rewards") which to me at least seem prone to encourage empty activities that don't really help with the loneliness mentioned in the message.
I think just talking to people you meet at random will probably be a better solution.
(until I get murdered by a stranger!)
If there is some way for people to "opt in" for random encounters such as Tinder, couchsurfing Meetup.com, it makes things much smoother.
What other sites are there that facilitate things happening in the real world? The MP3 experiment is perhaps my favorite.
It's much more likely that you'll be murdered by someone you have a close realtion with.
(Apart from being a bit snarky, it's also true, and leads (back) to:)
> I think just talking to people you meet at random will probably be a better solution.
It is. (Speaking from experience)
That said, one also get to know people online - from irc to games. I don't see any reason why a new "meet strangers" social network couldn't work. But if a majority of its users can't motivate themselves to talk to random people they meet - chances are the network will be coopted for some other agenda than "making new friends". Like "have more one night stands". And while sex is a healthy human activity, meeting people with the aim to become friends need a form of level playing field, and mutual intention.
Fighting off one unwelcome sexual advance every now and then is part of the human condition - but having to do it every time you "meet" someone, it gets old really fast.
Which is probably one reason people can meet in games: while people game for many aspects of gaming - most do it to relax and have fun.
The social network that forces people to interact with "the other" is one destined for failure.
Performing analytics on user content gives you even more information.
Information means $$.
My phone has access to multiple great browsers. Building a good lightweight web app means I can access the content from anywhere without having to deal with annoyances of push notifications or (as much) creepy tracking.
My favorite example of a mobile web app is currently Twitter Mobile [0]. I even like using it from my desktop. It's very lightweight, fast, and easy to read.
[0] https://mobile.twitter.com/
Apart from the default bright pink color it's lovely (and this is configurable)
I use it to keep twitter more work-friendly
Is there a way to run Android apps in a VM on Linux?
A VM for phone applications would be similar to a browser. A browser runs websites in a safe environment. A way to run apps in a safe environment would be nice.
Edit: instructions.
I downloaded Genymotion from https://www.genymotion.com/pricing-and-licensing/ (Individual, Basic, which costs no money). It's enough to run Android but you don't have Google Play.
I followed these general directions to install it https://inthecheesefactory.com/blog/how-to-install-google-se...
However the filetrip link didn't work (and I don't know if I want to trust it) and the google apps failed to install. I googled and eventually downloaded these files:
ARM to x86 translation: http://forum.xda-developers.com/android/general/guide-genymo...
Google Play: https://www.androidfilehost.com/?fid=24591023225177410 (banks_dynamic_gapps)
The latter is for Android 6 so you should run an Android 6 image on your emulated device.
My computer is still fine after installing those two files in the Android emulator but I don't take responsibility. Don't know how verified they are.
If you only need to use an app and not the rest of the environment you can also run it as a Chrome plugin under ARC and not mess with virtualization at all.
[1] https://developer.chrome.com/apps/getstarted_arc
The app is aiming at the Instagram, Snapchat crowd. Instagram didn't have a web front until recently, Snapchat still doesn't.
Younger generations have a very different relationship to their devices than someone born, say, in the 70's or 80's has.
They care very little about websites.
This hello.com seems like a much broader kind of "social network" that I would have a hard time getting any of my friends or family to try, I think.
I've been messing with some of the old federated projects that never seemed to go anywhere. GNU Social, Diaosapra, etc.
I'd like to just get a few nerd friends on one, just to say I'm at least trying to get away from the current model.
Hello just looks like another ello.
I still remember the time around ten years ago when a lot of people had independent blogs mostly free of clickbait and advertising. Nowadays, many post on social media only.
With RSS, you can subscribe to feeds with any standard reader. Interestingly enough, YouTube channels all have RSS feeds, so you can subscribe to them without needing to do so via a Google account.
http://www.hello.com/en/jobs/index.html#frontend_swe
I think they just thought mobile was priority and are launching a MVP before having the web version...
1) No web app - honestly I'm over installing apps and being bound to my phone. You lost me here.
2) A bit of 'wall of text' explaining what this is and I appreciate that the orkut.com bit is heartfelt, but this is not the best way to pull me in.
3) No actual content from the network that I can browse on the web to understand through immersion (this is what is needed instead of or to supplement the about text).
4) 'loves not likes' - Without delivering on the other bullets here I didn't connect with the product and therefore this sounded tacky.
5) The best of the jots - makes me feel maybe this is instagram?
It just feels that the product planner is checked out or there hasn't been much conversation with the market or something. I guess I'd understand a lot better if I installed the app and signed up, but not going to, I shouldn't have to jump through those hoops just to understand the product.
Admittedly I am just an average curious passerby with a short attention span here so my $0.02 is worth just that, $0.02. But hello.com could be onboarding people a lot more effectively in my opinion.
Hate to just parrot everyone else but having no web app is the root of all of these issues I think.
Orkut was great and I'm over FB/Twitter, hope this does well.
So it looks like a really weak "launch" :(.
And from the descriptions I don't see how its "features" are different from the other social networks.
I'd fear I'd have a whole heap of apps, and have no idea what they are or how to get to them.
In some ways it's the same with websites! I guess I could tag them or add them to a bookmark folder or something.
I spoke to a family member and he says to me I've got this bus app for route X. And I say what, you've got an app for your local bus route, and he says yes. I then asked what was wrong with the website?
Me too. BTW I think I'd be fine if the apps just downloaded themselves (assuming they're vetted and signed by the app store), and without occupying space on my phone-top (or whatever its called). I don't really need to know the difference between an app and the browser - for as long as it does its thing.
But I think for non technical people, apps are main way to use mobile devices. For example, I got married recently. My wife is a doctor. She uses iPad for personal computing. She tries to find the app for everything she wants to do on her iPad. In fact she uses Google app on her iPad a lot. Want to search something, start the Google app. I was surprised to see this. I tried to tell her that she can search straight from her Chrome browser. But I think it's matter of habit for her now and still prefers to use the Google App for search.
There are plenty of reasons to not want to use a mobile-only social network. I really like the concept of meeting new people based on interests (it's something I've been missing since ICQ, which had that functionality, was replaced with inferior alternatives like MSN messenger) but there's no way I'm getting into this mobile-only train for applications that don't have any reason to be mobile only.
They are building a web version, they're just doing mobile first. And that may be a pretty smart move.
"You will work with our product designers, mobile engineers, and backend engineers to create a distinct web version of our mobile offering." (http://www.hello.com/en/jobs/)
Orkut was global, and in a global context, mobile devices may be more heavily used than laptop / desktop web.
"Smartphone ownership rates have skyrocketed in many countries since 2013. This includes increases of over 25 percentage points among the total population in large emerging economies such as Turkey (+42 points), Malaysia (+34), Chile (+26) and Brazil (+26)."
http://www.pewglobal.org/2016/02/22/smartphone-ownership-and...
Even in the US, I see all the kids with mobile devices and controlled internet access. If you're shooting for the next generation of people, e.g., the young'uns, then mobile first is probably critical.
should be
"They are building a web version, they're just doing native apps first"
Doing mobile first can totally be web.
You're part of a growing minority who interprets it that way. Google search results for "mobile first" are still very web-focused today, but I'm concerned the native app community will usurp that phrase, confusing everybody.
And while I'm speaking for the web community, apologies for usurping the word "responsive" and confusing everybody.
Mobile devices have web browsers. In fact, by some measure, the ability to run a web browser would be the defining characteristic of a "smart" phone.
We had a name for phones that just ran little applets - they were called "feature phones". Some of them had very interesting, even great features.
But it's the browser, and things like the browser, that make the smartphone smart.
That said, the lack of a website is still a dealbreaker for me in this case. I don't want to have to access a social network through my phone. I do understanding going mobile-first on a new social network, but I'm not really interested in jumping aboard until I can use it from my laptop/desktop. But that may not mean much in terms of the app's success. I'm probably just not in the target audience.
That's too bad. Lyft and Tinder users seem to be getting along without the web, though.
Desktop versions should be as equally important as mobile, especially when you are talking about generating and sharing content.
I don't have the Facebook app installed on my phone. Not for privacy reasons, not because the web page is better, but because the Facebook app was taking up over 300mb of my 16gb phone, and the only way I knew to get that space back was deleting the app. With a web page, I can get rid of all of its stored data and still be able to access the site.
Steve Jobs was right, even if he was a bit early in his predictions. Web pages are better than apps in a lot of situations. Facebook doesn't need to be an app. Hello doesn't need to be an app. They just need good responsive web pages.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Push_API
> web pages can't run in the background
Ok not the same at all, but you can use web workers for background threads:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Web_Workers...
And the above have also been used to produce offline-first applications.
Unfortunately Apple has been bad at supporting these new APIs—ironic considering the last part of your comment. Google has been the best at it.
Let me give you an example. The official reddit app on my phone asks me maybe two or three times per week "Please enable push notifications". No. I don't want to do that. And I can't seem to get it to stop asking me. But on the website, in my browser, it's never asked me that. Because it can't. It's not allowed to. I'm not talking "is it technically possible from a pure theoretical standpoint", I mean in practice, is it physically possible for a web page on my iPhone to send push notifications and tear up my battery in the background? And I'm pretty sure the answer is "no". And that makes me very happy.
Though to be honest I do prefer apps for most things, but I want the web to at least give apps a challenge.
In addition I minimize apps downloads(loss of info, clutter, etc..)
Instagram has a web app, but I'd be curious to see how many users actually utilise it, in comparison to mobile app users. My guess is that mobile app users heavily outweigh web users. Instagram also chose to offer a restricted set of features on the web app, specifically to encourage using the mobile app.
That's not to say that a web app is unnecessary. I reckon that the number of web users for an app like Instagram is sufficient to warrant the existence and maintenance of a web app. But I think that the majority of social network consumers are not concerned either way, and to delay a release because the web app is still being developed would be a mistake.
Good choice, I've just tried their Android version and it's absolute bug-city to the extent that I'm unsure if they engaged in any real Android user testing / dog fooding at all.
In onboarding, the crop function simply did not work at all, showing a hyper-zoomed version of the image and then discarding the view when creating the final image.
In onboarding, twice (in three minutes total of usage) I was presented with a totally white screen. No UI. No back button functionality. Nothing on screen. Nothing to do. Only option: force close the app. It appears to happen after EVERY single step in onboarding is complete. Once after photo/basic profile, once after location.
Yes, I was required to force close the app _twice_ in three minutes of usage.
Criticism: Only 5 "personas"? Really? I was forced to unselect a number subjects very dear to me because apparently I'm too diverse for a social network????
And now the "join personas" button is failing, it attempts to bring up the onboarding menu but fails, dropping back to the already-completed personas menu over and over. I'll force close the app myself.
If you wanted free QA, you could have at least been honest with us about this being a total beta test. I wonder if the developers are in this thread. I bet they all use iPhone...
But since this is apparently released software, as a tester and developer myself I am deeply concerned with the state of your backend, based on the quality of your front end development.
The consensus in the comments seems to be that there are some other bad decisions that went into it too...
Each app would keep running its background processes and such; keep draining battery.
Maybe people don't bother checking what permissions does an app want; from reading your contacts to stuff on the SD card.
Nonetheless, it's intriguing to see that people still see room for new social networks.
To the developers: Give me a website or leave me alone.
UI needs work, if they add more countries they can not expect me the scroll down a list of 200+ items to find my phone country prefix. Just let me enter it.
For some reason on some pages the hamburger menu button is an actual hamburger while on other activities it is the standard 3 lines. I wonder if that is on purpose or a mistake.
B. I had a lot of issues signing up. White screens of death, inability to progress further. Had to restart the app no less than 4 times to complete registration.
C. Now that I am registered, I see a "Welcome to your folio" screen that doesn't let me do anything.
What did I just download?