About Heyyo

Questions

How does friending work?: Friendships are symmetrical - meaning you both have to say you're friends. If you unfriend someone, you can't see their status and they can't see yours. If you block someone you can't see their posts and they can't search for you to re-friend you. You'll have to refriend them.
So, everyone I friend can see my current status?: Yup. And you'll be able to see theirs. So like your parents always said, choose your friends wisely.
Wait, what if we both block each other?: Then you're kinda screwed. Clearly you were both angry and now you can't take it back.
So, everyone I friend can see my current status?: Yup. And you'll be able to see theirs. So like your parents always said, choose your friends wisely.
But not my past ones?: Correct.
Even if I save them?: Saved statues are for commonly recurring stuff. It's just easier than saying "Back to work again."
The design sucks.: One - that's not a question. Two - that's intentional. Heyyo isn't designed to be a low friction endless experience. It's designed so you can quickly answer the question, “What is Penelope up to right now?”
No, I meant the function. What if if my friend posts something and I miss it? Can I get a log?: No. Heyyo should help you lead a disconnected life. Treat it like a tool, not an endstate.
Can I DM?: No. You've probably got too many messaging apps already. Use one of them. Send a group text. If you mom's status makes you want to call her, call your mom. I'm sure she'd love it.
Can I share content to other platforms?: That's not exactly the point.
Well, what features are you planning on doing to make this place decent?: I plan on improving the quality of status updates. Adding things like basic text editing, image embedding, maybe a tasteful HTML link or two. I might add some goofy features, clearly I'm not taking this too seriously.

About Heyyo

Modern social networking has been consumed by 'content' designed to engage. And that's fine for the folks who like that. But it's frequently done so at the expense of us, the users - we don't know what our friends are doing, all we know is what the algorithm thinks we like.

So, Heyyo gets rid of the algorithm. And the feed. And engagement mechanics like Likes and Shares and Trending Topics.

Heyyo isn't so much a social network as it is a social service. It's just a list of your friends latest statuses arranged in the order you want.

Indie Created and Owned

This isn't designed to be a business. This is an indie website created by one guy after threatening to make “Away Message the App” for years and finally getting good enough at building product and frustrated enough with the modern internet to do it.

Enshittification-proof by Design

Modern social networks are resource intensive and depend on users staying engaged for minutes or hours so they can be served ads. The goal is to keep you hooked, never satisfied but always with the promise that satisfaction is coming.

Heyyo is built on principles that make this impossible. There's no infinite feed. There's no AI-service monitoring what you like or dislike. There's no mechanisms to allow for optimization. This means the core user experience can't be watered down in effort to drive engagement and expose you to more ads.

Heyyo can't be enshittified and stay Heyyo.