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Carly Ring, a senior studying early childhood education and child and family studies, takes a photo of a group at a photo booth during the launch of hello, a new passion-based social media, at Pigskin on Thursday, August 27, 2015. 

Say ‘hello:’ new app launching with test start at OU, offers free merchandise

New app ‘hello’ has been on campus all week in an effort to gain users and connect them based on their passions

 

A new app has been blazing onto campus this week and in its trail are free T-shirts, koozies and drinks.

The app, called hello, aims to connect people based on their interests and has been tabling outside of Baker Center all week.

After test runs in San Francisco, hello launched publicly Monday. Ohio University is the first campus to test it out. The University of Missouri is next on the list to visit.

“hello is a passion-based network,” Taylor Henning, the community marketing manager and game designer for hello, said. “It’s basically a way to connect with people who share the same interests and passions that you have.”

The app is only accessible via an invite and currently only available for iPhones. Those interested can sign up with the hello team Friday on South Beach or receive an invite from friends who have already joined.

From there, Users create a profile and choose five “personas,” of the 100 available to describe themselves. Personas are used as tags to categorize content shared within the app.

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“You’ll choose the ones that matter most to you,” Orkut Buyukkokten, hello’s co-founder and CEO, said. “It makes a huge difference. If you jog once in a blue moon, you’re not a runner.”

The kinds of personas available range from the expected answers like gamer and shopper to the more niche, such as “people watcher,” “vampire” and “nudist.”

Once these are selected, users can then post photos and share them into those persona threads, which they can then search for others’ content. For instance, dog-lovers will find a feed filled with photos of dogs. In searching the personas, users can message anyone in the network, hence the app’s claim that it will connect people with similar interests.

The function of the personas resembles that of hashtags, though Buyukkokten said they are more efficient. Buyukkokten worked at Google for 10 years before leaving with five friends to start hello.

“I don’t believe the hashtags work really well,” he said. “One, there are way too many hashtags … and when you’re looking for a certain kind of content, you have no idea which hashtag to search for. The second problem is people are using the same hashtag for different purposes. It makes it … almost impossible to search for.”

If the app does well, Henning said the app’s team will return to OU, possibly around Homecoming, to throw a party.

Buyukkokten and the team have already given OU students a cause for celebration as they had an open bar night Thursday at The Pigskin Bar and Grille for those who had downloaded the app. For a few hours each night, free drinks and food were handed out.

For some students, those perks were the reason for their attendance.

“I came for the free stuff,” Abe Farley, a senior studying exercise physiology, said. “The free food, free beer and free T-shirts. … I probably would not have downloaded (the app) if they hadn’t had all this free stuff.”

Emily Ellerbrock agreed but added that she did enjoy the personas listed, though it wasn’t enough to sell her just yet.

“I thought it had a lot of interesting ones but most (personas) only have one or two people in them,” the graduate student studying physical therapy said. “There’s a small likelihood I’ll use it.”

Elicia Gibson contributed to this report.

@buzzlightmeryl

mg986611@ohio.edu

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