* Since it is not ad dependent, yes, it can also provide a chronological timeline.
* Two post types supported: Text and Photo. Because sometimes a photo does tell a thousand words.
* Links to websites not supported in posts. Avoids viral proliferation of dumbed down politics, fake news, or stupid memes. If you want to get to the web or read the news, don't use a social network. They're here for you to be social. As in talk. Chat. Write things about your day. Ask others about their day. You get the picture. Being social.
* Shares or "retweets" not supported. Also to disrupt viral spreading of stuff that is almost never about socializing, and nowadays instead disturbingly often about wanting to be virally spread as a goal in itself.
* And finally... "Likes" not supported. You don't chat with friends at a café to get nods, right? You chat because you have something to say. If what you post is never commented on, yes, you can take it as a hint that you have little interesting to say. You can then choose to ignore that, or not. Comments, a will by others to interact, were always the true "like" anyway. If you write to be "liked", as many on Facebook do, you write for the wrong reasons, at least on a SOCIAL network.
Since it is funded by subscriptions, it ought to lift the quality by this fact alone. Less shitposting. I guess one might say I want a social network. I have yet to see one that is just a social network.
This sounds like it might be a good idea because it seems like it would remove the incentive to monetize personal information, but in practice it creates a barrier to adoption and makes the social network kinda useless.
I joined a subscription-based social network that was designed for expats [1]. It was by all-accounts well-designed, well-managed and had everything going for it. But no one in my circles are part of it, and the event lists were really thin because the network was really thin (and I live in one of the largest cities in the U.S.). It does "work" for some definitions of work, but it isn't very successful (though there seems to be enough people on it to make it sustainable--I wonder about retention rates past year 1).
I suspect the things on your list were conceived based on your circumscribed experiences and are not what the general market really wants. It could work in a more niche setting, but you'd have a hard time scaling the business model.
Disabling links to websites in posts for the sake of preventing fake news is kind of sad. I get why but it feels like punishing the majority for the minority of bad actors. It’s also still possible to spread fake news without a link.
Anyways, this is your ideal network and so please disregard my opinion on how it should work :)
I’m working on a social network that does most of what you mentioned. I never thought about reposts being a quick and easy way of stopping the spread of viral misinformation, I like that idea.
When most people think of social networks, they think of a way to connect with friends and family - not a way of discussing interesting issues (i.e. forums).
"Funded by subscriptions" more or less guarantees the former will not happen. People want stuff for free.
>Shares or "retweets" not supported. Also to disrupt viral spreading of stuff that is almost never about socializing, and nowadays instead disturbingly often about wanting to be virally spread as a goal in itself.
Sadly, reshares are part and parcel of a community - even before the days of the Internet. For many, gossip is part of socializing. A friend posted that he's just getting married. People will want to spread the word. How can they without reshares? Rewrite it themselves? Resharing is simply part of usual human interaction.
That seems, with all due respect, bananas. There are loads of reasons to have a link in your post, not least because you may use a third party photo host and you want to link to your holiday snaps without having to copy everything everywhere.
Even ignoring that though, you can't share recipes, tracks on youtube, programming blog posts, a cool pair of shoes, a link to a book your friend has been looking for for years...?
Links are the web, it would feel hollow without them.
This seems like a reaction to Facebook. Almost no one cares about this enough to create " good Facebook. Here in India millions of barely educated people enjoy Facebook to keep up with family and friends. They don't know how to pay for things online and are not comfortable putting their cards on the internet.
I support subscription funding but most of the rest sounds terrible. When I go scuba diving and post underwater photos on Facebook the likes are useful feedback on whether or not I'm taking good pictures and help me improve as an amateur photographer. Plus I enjoy it when people share my photos. It makes the world a brighter place and hopefully encourages viewers not to trash the ocean.
Mhh, why not go with a kickstarter style payment scheme? Have a campaign to fund the operating budget, another one to fund feature a and another one to fund feature b. You get user aligned prioritization for free while users are happy to be able to choose their level of support. Can’t believe I haven’t seen this model in action, yet!
That seems like a very peculiar choice, and meant people won't like such a social network. This may reduce the most important factor of social networks, People.
sounds substantially similar to IRC. if text is supported, i don’t see how retweets and links could be blocked. so if you accept that you can’t prevent those things (except by user agreement), it sounds like slack fits the bill.
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.
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 strange, in all this anti-socialnetwork craze, I'm craving a social network.
As it stands, I love the concept of a social network. I want a platform that facilitates at arms length socialization, because I'm rarely that in-person social with most of the people I know. A social network fills that need nicely. Yet, with that said, I don't want centralization or obvious control over the information flow and ultimately how we think/interact.
I feel like a scuttlebutt[1]-like solution is the answer, but I think it needs a bit more features. Like editing, web usage from federated platforms, etc.
The service looks like a ripoff of Instagram (loves, not likes) and Reddit (communities).
What problem is the site exactly trying to solve?
I had to spend the better part of a month trying to hound my friends to use Signal. I am not going to waste time for a service that's not even worth the effort.
Regarding communities, this was one of the strongest features from Orkut. I remember having lots of fun hunting niches/bizares communities (and not so much fun when I found out some communities I was part of got sold/traded, and then got renamed to something completely different, mostly for advertising purposes).
Everyone thinks that the main competitor for building communities is Facebook.com. But fbook.com does not build communities, they digitize existing ones.
So all these new apps come out with "better facebooks" not realizing (or accepting) that they already exist as Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram. These existing platforms are very good at true connection and community building.
Not sure why this has been posted here. The app is nearly abandoned and dead at this point.
I know we all want alternatives to the status quo, but you're not going to find it among a bunch of copycat services that haven't solved any of the fundamental problems causing us so much trouble today.
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.
Honestly, I don't think I want to join any other free "social network" after what happened and still happens at Facebook. I would be okay to pay for a social network that respect my privacy and that would be limited in features like status, photos and groups.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
[+] [-] jug|8 years ago|reply
* Funded by subscriptions.
* Free from ads.
* Since it is not ad dependent, yes, it can also provide a chronological timeline.
* Two post types supported: Text and Photo. Because sometimes a photo does tell a thousand words.
* Links to websites not supported in posts. Avoids viral proliferation of dumbed down politics, fake news, or stupid memes. If you want to get to the web or read the news, don't use a social network. They're here for you to be social. As in talk. Chat. Write things about your day. Ask others about their day. You get the picture. Being social.
* Shares or "retweets" not supported. Also to disrupt viral spreading of stuff that is almost never about socializing, and nowadays instead disturbingly often about wanting to be virally spread as a goal in itself.
* And finally... "Likes" not supported. You don't chat with friends at a café to get nods, right? You chat because you have something to say. If what you post is never commented on, yes, you can take it as a hint that you have little interesting to say. You can then choose to ignore that, or not. Comments, a will by others to interact, were always the true "like" anyway. If you write to be "liked", as many on Facebook do, you write for the wrong reasons, at least on a SOCIAL network.
Since it is funded by subscriptions, it ought to lift the quality by this fact alone. Less shitposting. I guess one might say I want a social network. I have yet to see one that is just a social network.
[+] [-] wenc|8 years ago|reply
This sounds like it might be a good idea because it seems like it would remove the incentive to monetize personal information, but in practice it creates a barrier to adoption and makes the social network kinda useless.
I joined a subscription-based social network that was designed for expats [1]. It was by all-accounts well-designed, well-managed and had everything going for it. But no one in my circles are part of it, and the event lists were really thin because the network was really thin (and I live in one of the largest cities in the U.S.). It does "work" for some definitions of work, but it isn't very successful (though there seems to be enough people on it to make it sustainable--I wonder about retention rates past year 1).
I suspect the things on your list were conceived based on your circumscribed experiences and are not what the general market really wants. It could work in a more niche setting, but you'd have a hard time scaling the business model.
[1] https://www.internations.org/
[+] [-] todd3834|8 years ago|reply
Anyways, this is your ideal network and so please disregard my opinion on how it should work :)
[+] [-] NetOpWibby|8 years ago|reply
I’m working on a social network that does most of what you mentioned. I never thought about reposts being a quick and easy way of stopping the spread of viral misinformation, I like that idea.
[+] [-] BeetleB|8 years ago|reply
"Funded by subscriptions" more or less guarantees the former will not happen. People want stuff for free.
>Shares or "retweets" not supported. Also to disrupt viral spreading of stuff that is almost never about socializing, and nowadays instead disturbingly often about wanting to be virally spread as a goal in itself.
Sadly, reshares are part and parcel of a community - even before the days of the Internet. For many, gossip is part of socializing. A friend posted that he's just getting married. People will want to spread the word. How can they without reshares? Rewrite it themselves? Resharing is simply part of usual human interaction.
[+] [-] SCdF|8 years ago|reply
That seems, with all due respect, bananas. There are loads of reasons to have a link in your post, not least because you may use a third party photo host and you want to link to your holiday snaps without having to copy everything everywhere.
Even ignoring that though, you can't share recipes, tracks on youtube, programming blog posts, a cool pair of shoes, a link to a book your friend has been looking for for years...?
Links are the web, it would feel hollow without them.
[+] [-] dominotw|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rock_hard|8 years ago|reply
Also: feeds are not ranked because of monetization...they are ranked because they work better that way
[+] [-] chaostheory|8 years ago|reply
It's not perfect, nor does it hit all your points but it's a start (of a trend at the very least)
http://www.adweek.com/digital/this-ad-free-social-media-app-...
[+] [-] pmoriarty|8 years ago|reply
- Decentralized
- Designed with strong privacy and anonymity of its users in mind
[+] [-] nradov|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ace_of_spades|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaccarmac|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sidcool|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ninkendo|8 years ago|reply
What you're saying sounds basically like chat.
[+] [-] diasp|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jiveturkey|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kristianc|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] juliansamarjiev|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jwmoz|8 years ago|reply
Remember app.net?
[+] [-] deanclatworthy|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rubyfan|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] oblio|8 years ago|reply
I imagine his problem is: he wants to make money :)
[+] [-] downer61|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Communitivity|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] tomcooks|8 years ago|reply
Ah, ok.
[+] [-] truebosko|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notheguyouthink|8 years ago|reply
As it stands, I love the concept of a social network. I want a platform that facilitates at arms length socialization, because I'm rarely that in-person social with most of the people I know. A social network fills that need nicely. Yet, with that said, I don't want centralization or obvious control over the information flow and ultimately how we think/interact.
I feel like a scuttlebutt[1]-like solution is the answer, but I think it needs a bit more features. Like editing, web usage from federated platforms, etc.
[1]: https://www.scuttlebutt.nz
[+] [-] sidkhanooja|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] romuloab42|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rambossa|8 years ago|reply
Everyone thinks that the main competitor for building communities is Facebook.com. But fbook.com does not build communities, they digitize existing ones.
So all these new apps come out with "better facebooks" not realizing (or accepting) that they already exist as Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram. These existing platforms are very good at true connection and community building.
How does "Hello" fit into that?
[+] [-] common_|8 years ago|reply
I know we all want alternatives to the status quo, but you're not going to find it among a bunch of copycat services that haven't solved any of the fundamental problems causing us so much trouble today.
[+] [-] thijser|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cocktailpeanuts|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jarnix|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unicornporn|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] goshx|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] behringer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chillydawg|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidy123|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JRITSRob|8 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] netrus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] addicted|8 years ago|reply
India probably dominates the downloads due to population differences.
[+] [-] batuhanicoz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] willart4food|8 years ago|reply
LOL
[+] [-] b3orn|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corobo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bigato|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] projectramo|8 years ago|reply
You see this most clearly in conservative v liberal tribalism, but that example is so close to most people you may not see it.
Even the most horrible "haters" feel they are protecting or preserving their secularism/race/religion/political opinion etc
[+] [-] roadbeats|8 years ago|reply