Whilst the founder has credibility in this space, I don't see what the problem is they are solving. There are many communities all across the internet, and also in centralised places like Facebook & reddit. Forums still remain hugely popular for niche community operators.
The only way social is going to work and be improved going forward is through decentralisation and taking our data out of the hands of a central repository where it can be used to target us, and is more vulnerable to breaches. Once we have that baseline the other problems can be solved by the communities themselves.
I don’t understand the decentralized part of your comment. There’s a reason Facebook and perhaps AOL before it was successful - it’s easy and everyone is there.
I’m a huge privacy advocate but the decentralized Facebook alternatives are a little wonky for most to get their heads around. Jane Average user could care less about blockchain hosted personal data. In most cases Jane just wants Facebook and is a little worried about what’s happening to her data. Facebook maybe more than any other alternative is in the best position to solve the user problem here.
I agree. The whole issue with the first decentralised networks at the moment are their usability and accessibility to the average person. There’s a lot of work to be done on this. There are 1000s of people tackling the problem globally from the protocol level to the user interfaces.
My point is these networks will and need to replace the centralised social model which is what this new network is.
Decentralized is the only way to know for sure your data is not being treated server-side against your wishes. This will certainly be the future of the social internet.
However, blockchain is absolutely not the only decentralization support, and might be the worst candidate to store data ever. If your comment about that was not a joke, then maybe you should actualize your knowledge on decentralized algorithms (for example, strong consensus as in the blockchain can be achieved using stellar consensus protocol, and many decentralized services work perfectly using peer to peer technology - not only file sharing).
Also, I find your comment about "Jane Average" quite inappropriate. Anyone can understand it's bad to give too much power to companies whose interests are financial. Moreover, it's inacurate : the current scandal and outfire against Facebook mostly comes from "Jane Average" people, and not the technical community who's mostly saying "we already knew it".
> blockchain is absolutely not the only decentralization support, and might be the worst candidate to store data ever
Thank you! Was about to reply the same thing when I read that comment.
> for example, strong consensus as in the blockchain can be achieved using stellar consensus protocol
I don't really think a social network needs that much consensus. Not for personal data anyway. As you control your own data, there is no need for consensus with others :)
>Decentralized is the only way to know for sure your data is not being treated server-side against your wishes. This will certainly be the future of the social internet.
As a society, we are not even close to being there. There isn't a single person I personally know who has decided to leave Facebook for this reason.
>Moreover, it's inacurate : the current scandal and outfire against Facebook mostly comes from "Jane Average" people, and not the technical community who's mostly saying "we already knew it".
Frankly, I see little evidence of this. It seems mostly coming from activists.
Can Jane Average understand how email works? Because that's really all their is to understand about distributed social networks: you own your data, but if you send someone a message you should consider it public (could be shared/forwarded to anyone) unless you trust the recipient not to share it.
I am not really sure what you are talking about...a email account consists of either emails you received or emails you sent.
So naturally for all your emails you have in your inbox the sender has them in their outbox...and every email you sent also exists as a copy in somebody else’s inbox.
And you can’t control whether the other parties host their own email server or if they use a hosted service...in which case, guess what: now a third party also has a copy.
Now to hosting your own email server...who is gonna stop your Datacenter from obtaining a copy of your emails? They call it backups ;)
It’s easy to talk to your Barista about decentralization and blockchain as the solution to privacy...but actually making that a reality is not.
And we haven’t even touched on spam...how you gonna fight that in a decentralized network? How about bots?
spam filters work pretty well for email these days. are you suggesting that effective spam filtering mandates a centralized single-company controls-everything architecture for email? why social networks?
Nope, lots of effective anti-spam tools are open source and take advantage of crowd-sourced spam analysis. I remain unconvinced of the need for one company to control it.
I don't really see the decentralized argument. I believe it's meant to solve a noble intent but in reality for a network to be successful all the information has to be readily available. You can't have a social network that says "Hey, thanks for posting about your birthday... we'll ensure it filters out to all nodes within at least 21 days".
So if all information has to be accessible and any node has access to all of it, or can aggregate it over time, then it's effectively centralized. Not to mention multiple nodes means anyone can tap into the information stream for whatever purpose.
So I see a case where centralization is somewhat critical but with tighter controls over what that data can be used for. Facebook was a headlong charge into new territory in information management and now I think we need to step back and examine how we better manage that.
That said I've spent about as much time thinking on it in depth as I have writing this post so I may be missing something quite obvious.
this. First, the thing that none of the decentralize advocates recognize is that outside of HN and the tech community, no one cares! When you mention the word "decentralized" to Joe Schmo of the world, you already lost him. He has no idea what you're talking about and doesn't care.
Second, there is no way that a decentralized social network is going to have the quality and feature development that a centralized company will have. There is a reason people build great things in this world from buildings, to widgets, to software etc. It's called incentive. Capitalism drives innovation and it's a requirement to have the quality of product that is needed to draw eyeballs off existing platforms.
Lastly, I don't buy the argument that centralized companies can't be responsible with data. Do we trust banks to hold our money? The future is not decentralized social networks.
troll. Orkut was a big thing before G+ came along; wouldn't be surprised if that one sucked up some of orkut's users, then lost interest and never returned to orkut, going to Facebook instead.
With all of the news about Facebook hijacking content from mobile phones I do wish all of these new social networks would come with a website I can use, at least to test the waters
Founded in 2004, existed for 10 years. I believe this was the first mass adoption by Brazilians that was noticeable worldwide, right?
I miss communities with names like “Eu abro a geladeira pra pensar” (from Brazilian Portuguese: I open the fridge to think). I haven’t seen any social media allow names and topics like that and present them in the same way that orkut did.
Orkut was all about communities in a way that neither facebook or reddit are. They were part of your identity in the network. Those were nice years.
Wholeheartedly agree. Maybe it is just nostalgy, but there was something special in these communities that Facebook Groups and Subreddits just don't have it.
I was part (in pt-BR): "I thought it was ice cream but it was beans" and "I like coke without gas".
It is something about signaling your identity online that is less pretentious, it takes itself less seriously than what you see today on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.
It also wasn't as vicious as the informal forums like 4Chan and some subreddits. These take themselves very seriously in conforming to the "let's not take ourselves too seriously" culture.
It is hard to determine if it was the product or the current overall internet culture at the time that was responsible for this more healthy (IMO) environment.
But having Orkut in my college years certainly made be a happier person.
Aye, had the same thought here. I'd've signed up to check it out. I don't own a mobile... Even if I did, I'd not download an app on spec. WebApp gives an opportunity to sell yourself with no additional buy-in.
If they're looking to capitalise on FB's data revelations, asking to download binaries is the wrong way to go about it. You need a no-commitment approach here.
Ditto. It's still an open question how open and accessible to end users the Internet will be. Anything browser-based still has that potential. Well, except on iOS where the browser doesn't permit augmentation.
This is very confusing. Your landing page is available in German, but the app is not available in Germany. Ratings in the Play Store are horrible, and support responds to bad reviews in the wrong language (English Review, Spanish response). The "download page" is 50% India and 50% all other countries. What is special about hello? After 2min on the website, I have no idea. And if I did not know orkut already, I would be soooo lost by the copy.
The founder has an amazing history, and the description of Hello is enticing but vague of what differentiates it.
None of that matters for me though, because when I attempted to sign up from my laptop I got the message 'Sorry, we're mobile only'. I see no compelling reason to be mobile-only at full launch. Mobile-first for your MVP with early adopters, yes that makes a great deal of sense. But when a company does a full launch I think they should support as many of the major platforms as they can (Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS).
Also, I am not convinced that we need yet another social media company (YASMC, "Yazz-em-see"?) that is centralized and will by necessity make money by monetizing attention.
Cal Newport thinks social protocols are the answer, as he discusses in http://calnewport.com/blog/2018/03/20/on-social-media-and-it.... I agree. I worked on this as the OASIS XDI technical committee co-chair for a while, and am working on something new now.
It's worse... Once you've signed up through mobile, you can use it from any browser. Makes you wonder why it wants you to sign up on mobile... Wants your phone number? Wants access to you contacts?
You do not need to install the reddit apps ever. You can sign up, and use it, through their web interface.
In fact when I use reddit from my phone (through Firefox) I force it to use the non-mobile version as I find it much faster (as long as you open every link in a new tab).
So websites now no longer simply want new users, they want unique,verified users.
I understand the need for such verification when a webmaster wants to prevent easy re-registrations of trolls and/or banned members, and it's still better than Google's invite only system for when they release something big like gmail or g+, but it's a dark pattern all the way.
If they wanted to verify my phone number, text me a code. That isn't a problem. It's the app install requirement we're talking about. Which both gives them access to some data on your phone, and also means only Android and iOS users can sign up.
(On Android, Hello gets access to your contacts, your rough location, the ability to read and modify your storage, use your camera, and view your Wi-Fi connections)
Read and Modify Storage and Camera permissions are needed so that it can take pictures, presumably to post (Why so many Android apps think they need to be their own camera instead of just dumping out to the user's preferred camera app I'll never understand). Everything else seems pretty sketchy.
Well, and as you point out, the camera permission is arguably completely specious. Android should, if I recall, also have a photo picker so you can select a single photo to give to the app, rather than giving it global access to your stuff.
I understand why it wants contacts, to make it easy to add people, but again, it can be done in a "let the OS offer the contact picker" way, if we're making a privacy-respecting app.
If Google is expected to be the steward of protecting users, they should not allow apps on the Play Store which don't use the most privacy-respecting method possible to implement the needed functionality.
I know what they look like, but I also know about services like Sift Science. I used "deterring" rather than stronger words for a reason. On a couple of former teams, I had to deal occasionally with spammer scum.
They pick you up because at least some, if not most of your friends are using app-only social networks that have access to their contacts and phone books. A few matching entries with your phone number and they have you pegged with a very high degree of certainty and connected to more than just your phone number and text messages. Everything your friends have in their contact info for you (birthday, email, home address, work address, family members, etc.). Obviously the same thing is true for your SMS/MMS messages that are sent to friends with app-only social networks which have access to their messages and call info. In the end you're giving away most of the same data, the difference is that you're just unable to benefit from it in the same way that you could with an Android or iOS device.
I agree as well that protocols would be the answer. I don't believe in it though. There are two very large groups of people who make every attempt in this direction fail. Yes, even things that apparently succeeded already (like email) are always fighting an uphill battle against these two groups.
Group one are the Trumps and Putins. The guys who want to control everything. They always want to centralize everything with themselves standing at the top. Sadly a lot of people with power/money are like that.
Group two are the dont-care folks. The ones that sign up to every next facebook because they don't care if their data is misused. The ones that make jokes about Zuckerberg today, but still use FB. They won't put up with the slightest bit of uncoolness or usability discomfort no matter what harm it does to their freedoms.
Sadly both these groups work very well together. Basically I gave up hope that anything reasonable can be achieved as long as both these exist. There's only the option to join either group and live with what these groups bring with them.
to be fair, usually it's not just the "slightest bit of... usability discomfort" but an enormous chunk. (e.g. Mastodon is hilariously complicated and difficult to understand for me and I can't even imagine trying to get my friends to use it.)
My hope is that killer apps will be used [1] more and more for decentralized platforms. Much like email became so popular - and still in use - I hope we eventually get to a state where centralized silos/platforms are thought of as silly; sort of what the AOL walled garden was.
[1] I stated "used" because there are plenty of apps (and underlying networks) related to decentralized social platforms that are already developed and in existence...more people simply have to make use of them.
Being mobile-only ensures that the network will only consist of pictures and low-effort posts. That's fine, there's a bigger market for Instagram competitors than for social networks with substance. But between that and the video that consisted almost solely of liking cat pictures makes it obvious that it's not for me.
Native app support might be too much to ask, but at least a webapp should be a major part of the launch time product.
It's fairly trivial to build a webapp around APIs that they've probably already developed for android/ios apps, so it's hard to forgive them for not having it ready by now.
Accessing Facebook through a Chrome/Chromium browser on an Android device allows you to make an app on your homescreen that's not nearly as invasive as the mobile app. That being said, the main difference will be improved battery life and less background processes running, as they'll gather most of your data from your friends on the receiving end of texts/calls/etc who are using the mobile app.
While true, they probably won't be the first answer. You need a some of these networks with real traction (or at least one huge one) so they can derive a protocol from the greatest common factors between them. To preemtively make a protocol sans popular implementation has little value and often ends in low adoption. As we've learned, the success of a protocol is more about its popularity than its presence or quality. So I say let these networks gestate and once the market (of people, not money) starts picking winners, then begin your abstraction.
And for those (of us) working on solutions to this problem space now, keep going. You don't need a committee or standards doc or whatever. You just need an awesome impl.
hello.com used to be owned by Google, too. It came with the Picasa acquisition. He probably just asked Larry for both. It's not as if he were a random employee. Somewhere on the Internet I saw that Google might own a stake (I'm a former Googler, but have no clue about any such arrangements).
I tried Hello once it was launched, hopeful that it would be a viable alternative to facebook which would gain traction because of Orkut's name. I really tried to like it, but I gave up because it didn't have a way to find my real life friends back then. I don't know about now. But when I looked at it, it was all about connecting via shared interests, and apparently they didn't want me to search for people by name.
I hate to say this, but it's either a terrible landing page or terrible product I'm seeing here.
I totally admire the effort to bring back Orkut, but I don't see any value proposition that makes me want to try this out other than some philosophical words that anyone can say.
In fact, I have never seen a product introduced in these philosophical ways succeed. The only signal I get from this is that the creator is naive (No offense, I'm sure the creator is insightful as he's the one who created one of the earliest social networks in the world, but just saying that's not what the copy on the website is signaling).
If you believe in "love, not likes", I would like to see HOW you implemented it. Otherwise there are tons of social networks out there each with its own twist in "connecting with people with similar interests".
Maybe there's more to the product than what the website says, and if that's the case, you should show that instead.
I wish the blog post had dates because from the comments I don't know if it's the hello thing from Google, a relaunch or and old blog post showcasing something that failed years ago.
So I got curious and download the app. Start setting it app and... lo and behold the app tells me that I already have an account. Fair enough I tend to try all new thing BUT . . . there's no way for me to log onto the account, the one and only option that appears in the app is to create a new account.
App not available on the iTunes store in my country, Romania.
I don't get why app developers feel the need to add restrictions like that. Don't they need early adopters?
Also it's mobile only at this point. While I understand why, another app that's supposed to increase my mobile addiction won't change the world and is not going to win me over, sorry.
I think we are beyond the point where services can lead with being a social network and succeed. Every service that supports multi-user interaction is a network, and every network that supports personal expression in its interactions is a social network.
A service that is, as this is billed, just a social network, with no clear defining feature or problem it’s solving, is vapid and akin to the dotcom bubble.
I’m finding that “social networks” should be a consequence of a product that solves a real problem, not that product’s raison d’etre. And furthermore, given the data collection/privacy zeitgeist of late, I’m of the belief that a social network developing within your service is a liability.
While I agree with your main points I would object to your objection that someone can't launch a social network in and of itself. But I do think if you're going to launch a social network you're going to have to tell me how to differentiate your product from all the other products out there.
From reading the comments here I think a new social network needs to say the following up front:
- closed or open source?
- centralised or decentralised? federated or not?
- up-front fee, subscription service or paid for by advertising?
- privacy policy, what is it? share with 3rd party?
- is there an API? how granular is it?
- what about sharing and following?
- what specific niche are you aiming at or are you going for a general audience?
- is your product aiming to be a platform?
- how are you different from the incumbents?
- mobile or web or native or some combination of the above?
- in short, let me know your angle, and give me reasons to try you out
Frankly, for me, the fact that you started another social network and let it die would discourage me from trying your new effort. And stuff like `stay beautiful' strikes me as saccharine and inauthentic though maybe I've become too cynical, clearly I'm not within the target audience.
>I’m finding that “social networks” should be a consequence of a product that solves a real problem, not that product’s raison d’etre.
Facebook mainly solves one problem: How do I keep in communication with the many people I know IRL? This is a real problem for many people, especialy when you have friends/family all over the country/world.
Any would-be strict competitor with Facebook will have to deal with a bootstrapping problem: How do you get enough people who know each other IRL to sign up and use the website?
Relaxing any one aspect of that, I think, will make success much easier:
* Enough people: You could have a niche focus (car forum) or a niche community (forum for one Eve Corp).
* Know eath other IRL: You could have an anonymous forum (4chan) or a pseudonymous forum (Reddit).
* Sign-up: Twitter, YouTube, and most forums don't require signups to view user-provided content. 4chan doesn't even require login to post.
Does anyone remember the Pierre Omidyar's "manifesto" on how Ebay is all about what is good about human and that humans are mostly good by default? Can't seem to find it anywhere.
I checked and you're right. For launching an entire product, they're really dropping the ball in the first sentence.
I read the English to imply that the network is based on your "loves" (passions, hobbies, goals) but the Portuguese makes it pretty obvious that's not right at all. I have a hard time interpreting the English in any way that matches the Portuguese version.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 221 ms ] threadThe only way social is going to work and be improved going forward is through decentralisation and taking our data out of the hands of a central repository where it can be used to target us, and is more vulnerable to breaches. Once we have that baseline the other problems can be solved by the communities themselves.
I’m a huge privacy advocate but the decentralized Facebook alternatives are a little wonky for most to get their heads around. Jane Average user could care less about blockchain hosted personal data. In most cases Jane just wants Facebook and is a little worried about what’s happening to her data. Facebook maybe more than any other alternative is in the best position to solve the user problem here.
My point is these networks will and need to replace the centralised social model which is what this new network is.
However, blockchain is absolutely not the only decentralization support, and might be the worst candidate to store data ever. If your comment about that was not a joke, then maybe you should actualize your knowledge on decentralized algorithms (for example, strong consensus as in the blockchain can be achieved using stellar consensus protocol, and many decentralized services work perfectly using peer to peer technology - not only file sharing).
Also, I find your comment about "Jane Average" quite inappropriate. Anyone can understand it's bad to give too much power to companies whose interests are financial. Moreover, it's inacurate : the current scandal and outfire against Facebook mostly comes from "Jane Average" people, and not the technical community who's mostly saying "we already knew it".
Thank you! Was about to reply the same thing when I read that comment.
> for example, strong consensus as in the blockchain can be achieved using stellar consensus protocol
I don't really think a social network needs that much consensus. Not for personal data anyway. As you control your own data, there is no need for consensus with others :)
As a society, we are not even close to being there. There isn't a single person I personally know who has decided to leave Facebook for this reason.
>Moreover, it's inacurate : the current scandal and outfire against Facebook mostly comes from "Jane Average" people, and not the technical community who's mostly saying "we already knew it".
Frankly, I see little evidence of this. It seems mostly coming from activists.
Agreed, but judging from the last few weeks, Jane Average apparently does care:
- they have control over their data
- can see the stuff they want
- and can have good blocking tools
Which all require decentralisation (in latter case because open APIs hurt monopolies).
End users don't care about data structures in any system, centralised or not.
So naturally for all your emails you have in your inbox the sender has them in their outbox...and every email you sent also exists as a copy in somebody else’s inbox.
And you can’t control whether the other parties host their own email server or if they use a hosted service...in which case, guess what: now a third party also has a copy.
Now to hosting your own email server...who is gonna stop your Datacenter from obtaining a copy of your emails? They call it backups ;)
It’s easy to talk to your Barista about decentralization and blockchain as the solution to privacy...but actually making that a reality is not.
And we haven’t even touched on spam...how you gonna fight that in a decentralized network? How about bots?
I could go on but I hope you get the picture.
So if all information has to be accessible and any node has access to all of it, or can aggregate it over time, then it's effectively centralized. Not to mention multiple nodes means anyone can tap into the information stream for whatever purpose.
So I see a case where centralization is somewhat critical but with tighter controls over what that data can be used for. Facebook was a headlong charge into new territory in information management and now I think we need to step back and examine how we better manage that.
That said I've spent about as much time thinking on it in depth as I have writing this post so I may be missing something quite obvious.
Second, there is no way that a decentralized social network is going to have the quality and feature development that a centralized company will have. There is a reason people build great things in this world from buildings, to widgets, to software etc. It's called incentive. Capitalism drives innovation and it's a requirement to have the quality of product that is needed to draw eyeballs off existing platforms.
Lastly, I don't buy the argument that centralized companies can't be responsible with data. Do we trust banks to hold our money? The future is not decentralized social networks.
I imagine his problem is: he wants to make money :)
Anyway, it sounds like a very short time for something that was created, became a such relevant part of my life and all my friends, then disappeared.
If asked from top of mind, I would say it was founded 20 years ago.
I miss communities with names like “Eu abro a geladeira pra pensar” (from Brazilian Portuguese: I open the fridge to think). I haven’t seen any social media allow names and topics like that and present them in the same way that orkut did. Orkut was all about communities in a way that neither facebook or reddit are. They were part of your identity in the network. Those were nice years.
I was part (in pt-BR): "I thought it was ice cream but it was beans" and "I like coke without gas".
It is something about signaling your identity online that is less pretentious, it takes itself less seriously than what you see today on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter.
It also wasn't as vicious as the informal forums like 4Chan and some subreddits. These take themselves very seriously in conforming to the "let's not take ourselves too seriously" culture.
It is hard to determine if it was the product or the current overall internet culture at the time that was responsible for this more healthy (IMO) environment.
But having Orkut in my college years certainly made be a happier person.
https://venturebeat.com/2016/08/05/orkut-founder-launches-he...
Today's news burst seems to be that Hello has launched in India.
If they're looking to capitalise on FB's data revelations, asking to download binaries is the wrong way to go about it. You need a no-commitment approach here.
India probably dominates the downloads due to population differences.
Ah, ok.
None of that matters for me though, because when I attempted to sign up from my laptop I got the message 'Sorry, we're mobile only'. I see no compelling reason to be mobile-only at full launch. Mobile-first for your MVP with early adopters, yes that makes a great deal of sense. But when a company does a full launch I think they should support as many of the major platforms as they can (Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS).
Also, I am not convinced that we need yet another social media company (YASMC, "Yazz-em-see"?) that is centralized and will by necessity make money by monetizing attention.
Cal Newport thinks social protocols are the answer, as he discusses in http://calnewport.com/blog/2018/03/20/on-social-media-and-it.... I agree. I worked on this as the OASIS XDI technical committee co-chair for a while, and am working on something new now.
In fact when I use reddit from my phone (through Firefox) I force it to use the non-mobile version as I find it much faster (as long as you open every link in a new tab).
I understand the need for such verification when a webmaster wants to prevent easy re-registrations of trolls and/or banned members, and it's still better than Google's invite only system for when they release something big like gmail or g+, but it's a dark pattern all the way.
(On Android, Hello gets access to your contacts, your rough location, the ability to read and modify your storage, use your camera, and view your Wi-Fi connections)
I understand why it wants contacts, to make it easy to add people, but again, it can be done in a "let the OS offer the contact picker" way, if we're making a privacy-respecting app.
If Google is expected to be the steward of protecting users, they should not allow apps on the Play Store which don't use the most privacy-respecting method possible to implement the needed functionality.
Group one are the Trumps and Putins. The guys who want to control everything. They always want to centralize everything with themselves standing at the top. Sadly a lot of people with power/money are like that.
Group two are the dont-care folks. The ones that sign up to every next facebook because they don't care if their data is misused. The ones that make jokes about Zuckerberg today, but still use FB. They won't put up with the slightest bit of uncoolness or usability discomfort no matter what harm it does to their freedoms.
Sadly both these groups work very well together. Basically I gave up hope that anything reasonable can be achieved as long as both these exist. There's only the option to join either group and live with what these groups bring with them.
[1] I stated "used" because there are plenty of apps (and underlying networks) related to decentralized social platforms that are already developed and in existence...more people simply have to make use of them.
It's fairly trivial to build a webapp around APIs that they've probably already developed for android/ios apps, so it's hard to forgive them for not having it ready by now.
While true, they probably won't be the first answer. You need a some of these networks with real traction (or at least one huge one) so they can derive a protocol from the greatest common factors between them. To preemtively make a protocol sans popular implementation has little value and often ends in low adoption. As we've learned, the success of a protocol is more about its popularity than its presence or quality. So I say let these networks gestate and once the market (of people, not money) starts picking winners, then begin your abstraction.
And for those (of us) working on solutions to this problem space now, keep going. You don't need a committee or standards doc or whatever. You just need an awesome impl.
It says he was a google engineer, but I get the impression he left. So this is independent, right?
I totally admire the effort to bring back Orkut, but I don't see any value proposition that makes me want to try this out other than some philosophical words that anyone can say.
In fact, I have never seen a product introduced in these philosophical ways succeed. The only signal I get from this is that the creator is naive (No offense, I'm sure the creator is insightful as he's the one who created one of the earliest social networks in the world, but just saying that's not what the copy on the website is signaling).
If you believe in "love, not likes", I would like to see HOW you implemented it. Otherwise there are tons of social networks out there each with its own twist in "connecting with people with similar interests".
Maybe there's more to the product than what the website says, and if that's the case, you should show that instead.
LOL
I don't get why app developers feel the need to add restrictions like that. Don't they need early adopters?
Also it's mobile only at this point. While I understand why, another app that's supposed to increase my mobile addiction won't change the world and is not going to win me over, sorry.
A service that is, as this is billed, just a social network, with no clear defining feature or problem it’s solving, is vapid and akin to the dotcom bubble.
I’m finding that “social networks” should be a consequence of a product that solves a real problem, not that product’s raison d’etre. And furthermore, given the data collection/privacy zeitgeist of late, I’m of the belief that a social network developing within your service is a liability.
While I agree with your main points I would object to your objection that someone can't launch a social network in and of itself. But I do think if you're going to launch a social network you're going to have to tell me how to differentiate your product from all the other products out there.
From reading the comments here I think a new social network needs to say the following up front:
Frankly, for me, the fact that you started another social network and let it die would discourage me from trying your new effort. And stuff like `stay beautiful' strikes me as saccharine and inauthentic though maybe I've become too cynical, clearly I'm not within the target audience.Facebook mainly solves one problem: How do I keep in communication with the many people I know IRL? This is a real problem for many people, especialy when you have friends/family all over the country/world.
Any would-be strict competitor with Facebook will have to deal with a bootstrapping problem: How do you get enough people who know each other IRL to sign up and use the website?
Relaxing any one aspect of that, I think, will make success much easier:
* Enough people: You could have a niche focus (car forum) or a niche community (forum for one Eve Corp).
* Know eath other IRL: You could have an anonymous forum (4chan) or a pseudonymous forum (Reddit).
* Sign-up: Twitter, YouTube, and most forums don't require signups to view user-provided content. 4chan doesn't even require login to post.
I'm sorry, but this sounds like a joke to me. Loves instead of likes? Is this the first thing you want to say about your born again social network.
> I designed hello to help you connect with people who share your passions.
Sound very much like the “Facebook has always been about helping people make connections” mantra.
So, I guess it's Facebook with loves and mobile app only... Say what you want about Mastodon, but at least it's a real alternative.
> hello is the first social network build on profound friendships instead of 'likes'.
So maybe it is a social network whose focus is people you really know well instead of companies and random people? I dunno, it's still very vague.
Funny, that was FB's advantage over MySpace. But, I suppose FB found it too limiting to only monetize real relationships.
I read the English to imply that the network is based on your "loves" (passions, hobbies, goals) but the Portuguese makes it pretty obvious that's not right at all. I have a hard time interpreting the English in any way that matches the Portuguese version.