Orkut Is Back To Say “Hello” To The World
Orkut Buyukkokten, a former Google employee who founded the trendsetter social networking website Orkut.com more than a decade ago, has launched a new social network ‘Hello’ in India.
“The social landscape has immensely changed in the past decade where everything has evolved from browsers to mobile phones. Earlier, people were getting introduced to social networking platform like Orkut for the first time, but Hello will be a new and very different experience to this mobile-friendly generation. We designed Hello to help you make connections in the real world. It’s a social network built on love not likes, and I’m delighted to say ‘Hello’ to India once again,” said Orkut Buyukkokten, now the Co-founder & CEO of San Francisco-based Hello Network Inc.
In the wake of a massive data breach scandal, Buyukkokten believes that the new app has been built particularly for the new mobile generation and around their interests to create positive, meaningful, authentic connections and sustained social engagement. “We don’t share our user’s data and neither do we look at private conversations between the users. We have a reputation system called Karma where the user can gain reputation based on interaction with people. When a user signs up, they are asked about five things that they are passionate about and then get recommendations that are non-intrusive. Our network graph not just follows the front profile but also interests, personality, reputation and karma. Hence, it makes the interaction discoverable and authentic around shared passions,” he said.
Adding to the USP of the app, he said, “At the heart, it is all about communities and we have designed the entire experience around communities people are passionate about. Today’s online network forces people to treat each other totally differently from how they would behave face-to-face. Technology should help us become more understanding, more optimistic, kinder and better people,” he feels.
The app, currently available in Brazil with nearly one million downloads, was in the beta test mode in India for the past several months. Now it is available on the iOS and Google Play Store and will be launched in web version very soon.
Orkut was owned and operated by Google and was named after its creator, Orkut Buyukkokten. It was shut down by Google on September 30, 2014. “Hello is my fourth social network venture and we start with a clean slate. Orkut was the beginning of a journey but Hello is like a spiritual successor of Orkut and a confirmation of the journey. If we look at the past, we are bringing the best of Orkut in knowledge,” said Buyukkokten on his experience of launching apps over the years.
