Say Hello to Heello.com, an Alternative to Twitter

Copying another popular social network’s entire framework may not seem like the smartest idea in the world, but that’s exactly what Noah Everett did—founder of renowned photo sharing website, Twitpic.

Everett launched Heello in August of 2010 and the network was released to the public in August of 2011. When you initially sign up for a new account, it’s hard not to recognize the obvious similarities between Heello and Twitter.

Heello’s layout closely resembles that of Twitter, with very few significant differences between the two social networks. A menu can be found at the top, giving users the option to customize their own settings, build a profile and search for other users. Instead of placing the stream of updates in the left hand column like Twitter, Heello places it in the right hand column.

Each user is called “@username” and users can “@reply” to each other at any time. Updates on Heello are limited to 140 characters, just like Twitter.

Heello essentially lets you do everything that Twitter allows you to do, including tweeting to another user, following other users' tweets and retweeting from your stream. The only real distinction that Heello has here are different labels for every Twitter-like action.

Tweets are called “pings”: On Heello, you don’t “tweet” to your audience. Instead, you send them “pings” when you update your personal stream.

Retweets are called “echoes”: When you want to forward a specific ping from another user to the users who want to view your pings, forget about calling it a “retweet.” It’s called an "echo" on Heello.

Followers are called “listeners”: Adding other users to view their stream is not called “following,” like it is on Twitter. When other users choose to follow your pings, they become your “listeners.”

Following is called “listening”: As soon as you click “Listen” on any user’s profile, you become a listener to their pings. Their ping updates will be displayed in the stream on your homepage.

Right of the bat, it’s easy to assume that Heello is nothing but a Twitter clone. Although the framework is eerily similar to Twitter, it does have one thing that Twitter doesn’t have—a stream that updates itself automatically.

On Twitter, a user has to press the “Home” button or refresh the page to continuously see new tweets coming in. On Heello, the stream will automatically feed you updates in real time so you don’t need to keep hitting buttons to see new pings.

Of course, some users might argue that web applications like TweetDeck and HootSuite have automatic updating streams built-in to them, which can connect to their Twitter accounts and automatically display new tweets to them in real time, thus stripping away Heello's most distinct characteristic that separates it from Twitter.

Another useful feature of Heello involves the addition of using thumbnails for multimedia-rich content such as photos or videos, which are be displayed within the stream. Unlike Twitter, which can only provide a hyperlink to a photo or a video, Heello can give users a small, visual preview of what they might see before clicking on it.

It is unlikely that Heello will overthrow Twitter and become the superior social network in the foreseeable future, especially since the founder of Heello has taken most of the unique features of Twitter and labeled them with different names. Even though the automatic updated stream is a nice touch, Heello will need to further differentiate itself so that it can compete successfully against a social media giant like Twitter.

Like most social networking websites, Heello is free to join. All you need to do is enter a username, a password and an email address at Heello.com to sign up. Heello will then ask you to confirm your account via email.

If you already love everything about Twitter, it’s likely that you’ll also enjoy using Heello.