Orkut maker comes back with Hello

The maker of the once beloved Orkut, which shut down in 2014 with the advent of Facebook, is coming back with his new creation. Hello.

Orkut’s creator, who was a former engineer, Orkut Buyukkokten has launched the app for Android and iOS. It is now available in US, Canada, Britain, France, Australia, Brazil, Ireland. It will be shortly be made available in Germany, Mexico and India by this month.

Describing the mobile-only app, Buyukkokten said, “Hello is the first social network built on loves, not likes. I designed hello to help you connect with people who share your passions. Fear and hatred have no place when you make such a simple and friendly gesture to someone else.”

Hello doesn’t use any external data apart from your contacts to find friends. It is primarily a photo sharing app and doesn’t allow you to post texts alone. You can edit the backgrounds, add text, and add filters to the images similar to Instagram.

It surely is not competing with the heavyweights at the market as of now. But, it still has to fight against inertia and convince you to join another network. When Facebook has over 1.7 billion active users, it’s almost certain that like-minded hobbyists are already there.

Orkut though had a base of 300 million user base back then. It had cultivated a massive following in Brazil that stayed loyal throughout most of the service’s existence.

It won’t have to try to pull in a huge number of members given the large group it had loyal to it.