Hello social network from Orkut

What is Hello

Hello has been launched by Orkut Büyükkökten, the man behind Orkut. It is an attempt to make an entry into the social media circles with a unique concept.

How is it different from Orkut or other social networks?

It does not seem to be competing with the SNS giants like Facebook or Twitter. Rather, it lets you choose Personas to let you in. You would be getting to know of the persons with the same Personas ( or the interests, to term it in a simple language) and interact with them. Your News Streams and friend suggestions would be based on the Personas you choose.

Hello has a unique branding. Once you sign up, you will need to indicate five of your interests. A special algorithm will search for the people with similar tastes and present them as suggestions - just like friend suggestions on Facebook - called Potentials. You can add images to your profile - these are called jots as you would do on other networks. As you keep contributing, you will gather points - known as Karma and climb up the leader board. There are rewards and gifts for those up on the leader board.

Will it survive against the competitors?

The new social network is likely to be more graphical than text based. Though it could be too early to know the exact way how it works, It will not access any of your external data and will only access your contacts. You will need to assign an avatar to any post you make and then associate it to any of the five Personas you have selected as you belong to.

It may not be easy to to predict the future as yet. Hello will need to persuade users to join a new network which may not be an easy task. Facebook has been enjoying a dominant position in the social media genre. Besides, it also has WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Instagram which it owns. The combined user base is really quite strong. Hello will need to work out a strategy to find the users.

Availability

The app is available as a mobile only version across Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Ireland, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S. It is expected to arrive in Germany, India and Mexico by this month end. The service has apps for Android and iOS.

My take on the app

With the plethora of social network sites already crowding the internet space, the question is whether we need another service. We are all interconnected through Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram to name a few. I do not find how a new network can change the scenario any further. However, with the lack of exact nature of connectivity that the app offers, it could be too early to predict the things. Looking like a mix of Facebook and Instagram with a pinch of Pinterest thrown in, I would think it would be interesting to see how it fares in the face of the competition.

Here are my thoughts on Hello social network. Let me answer your queries along with my opinion.

Will the Hello social network can become popular as same as Orkut?

It's not designed to be same as old Orkut or Facebook. If you watch the Brazilian demo of the hello app you can notice that this is more of social network meant for interest based connections.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHyQuS3pLJM

Depending on how people manage to get around this social network, the popularity during initial few months will be different. It'll take months or even years before the concept of this social network sinks in. But it seems it may catch up slowly compared to snapchat and instagram. The interest based schema filtering will be very worth checking out. It's too early to say that this social network will be any good for the users.

What is your opinion on Hello social network?

The thing with Hello, is not that it's your regular social network where you connect with others and send messages. That part will remain with facebook. if you check the demo of the Hello, you'd find totally different way of doing things. They are separating the content with schema. So the art, photography, video and audio will be categorized and more accessible depending on user interest. What this network is trying to do is isolating the hobbies, interests, mood and the persona in this experience. This helps people focus on their personal interests rather than being driven by the social feed. This was very hard with Facebook because it imposes interests of friends and others on you. That gap is addressed by the Orkut and he made Hello to be more of persona centric network.

On the face you'd only find this social network similar to facebook and instagram mixture. But inside the algorithm and the way of doing things is completely different. Also due to the persona centric algorithm, the monetization would be even more accurate and targeted. Hopefully more investors invest into his social network. And this way hello may survive the acquisition and even turn out to be more positive compared facebook and twitter.

There are some new features in the "Hello network" introduced by the same person as Orkut.
Now whether it can compete ahead of Facebook, whatsApp and Instagram is yet to be seen, as people would always look for something new, when it comes to the world of entertainment and socializing. I found these following features quite impressive.

Personas

Persona is the feature based on building up a community following a particular passion. So people get to find like minded groups and can share his own world of passion.

Folio

The Folio is generally a personalized feed of relevant content that comes from your chosen personas.

Potentials

Potentials in Hello network is a feature where people can get introduced to each other, who share common groups of personas, location and personalities.

Connections

This is direct messaging feature where one can send photos, videos, gifts and unique expressions.

Leaderboards
This is a moral boosting feature where one can become a persona leader, based on the number of contributions and interactions that one persona can generate.

Milestones & rewards
This time the Hello network has played on the user's greedy mind and has introduced an incentive to increase the interactions and reach milestones, hence go on unlocking rewards, which can really be fun and exciting to most people.

With these new ideas Hello can fare well in the social networking sphere tiding over the tough competition.