Former WhatsApp employees build HalloApp, a platform to provide alternative to Facebook

In a blog post, HalloApp said that social media has become digital malls.

Facebook rival: Facebook is the most popular social media platform, and currently does not have much of a rival, especially considering the fact that when user movement shifted from Facebook, Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook, emerged to be the most preferred platform. However, now, two former employees of Facebook-owned WhatsApp have built an alternative. Neeraj Arora and Michael Donohue have come up with a social media platform called HalloApp, and they are touting it to be the first real-relationship network. Sharing the news about the new platform, the developers basically said that HalloApp is everything that Facebook is not.

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In a Twitter thread, Arora talked about how social media, which was a place to bring people together, has become a place where people rarely post about who they really are, and how the posts that people see are not from the people they know. He also spoke about how there is no privacy because “someone is always listening”.

As per Arora, HalloApp tackles all of these problems, where there are no bots, no ads, no likes or followers etc. He added that the platform also has end-to-end encrypted chats so that no one, not even the developers, can have access to the conversations between users.

In a blog post, HalloApp said that social media has become digital malls.

“Where you hoped to find your friends, instead you found ads, bots, likes, filters, influencers, followers, misinformation, and more. Where you hoped to have meaningful conversations, instead you found yourself falling down the rabbit hole of blinking red notifications and an algorithmic feed of meaningless content. Where you hoped for a safe space to keep in touch with your siblings, family members, neighbors, and friends from college, you found content from people you’ve never met before—the whole thing feeling invasive, even creepy,” it said, in what seems to be a veiled dig at Facebook.

The initial pitch of HalloApp can be summarised in this statement on its blog – “No ads. No bots. No likes. No trolls. No followers. No algorithms. No influencers. No photo filters. No “feed fatigue.” No misinformation spreading like wildfire.”

HalloApp’s pitch seems to be refreshing and it seems that it could target everything that bothers people about social media. However, this was also what Facebook was at the beginning, and what Snapchat was and what Instagram was. While the blog has spoken about everything that the users would love to have, it has not shed much light on how it plans to sustain while ensuring that all of these aspects are indeed delivered to the users. After all, it is the sustainability factor that drives most platforms to get ads and eventually, targeted ads.

For now, though, HalloApp could provide a much needed relief from what it so aptly called the feed fatigue.