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.

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'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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[1] https://developer.chrome.com/apps/getstarted_arc

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..)

Desktop versions should be as equally important as mobile, especially when you are talking about generating and sharing content.

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.

Apart from the default bright pink color it's lovely (and this is configurable)

I use it to keep twitter more work-friendly

That's too bad. Lyft and Tinder users seem to be getting along without the web, though.