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Your Friends [probably] Suck
Yeah, you read it right– “Your Friends [probably] Suck” was Hyphos at UConn’s tagline at today’s Spring Involvement Fair.
No, we’re not calling you, or even your friends losers– we’re just calling your attention to the fact that often we make friends with people because we happen to be with them at the same place and time, not because we have things in common. Naturally, there’s not much of a way around this– you have to make do with the people who you happen to be able to spend enough time with to jumpstart the process and getting to know each other’s life stories and making of inside jokes. If you happen to have a lot in common, well, that’s just a bonus.
But what if we could use technology to turn the tables? We already use the internet to find the cheapest flight or the best school, to broadcast our ideas to the world, and to interact with our closest friends. So what if we could use it to make new friends? And not just anyone, but people who we’ll really resonate with because we have so much in common.
That’s how we’ll make friends in the 21st Century, and, before too long, that’s how we’ll be able to start making friends on At The Pool. It’s the latest invention coming from Hyphos, and we’re looking forward to using it as much as anyone to awesome new people nearby.
And as a perk for students at UConn, we’re offering you a free photo shoot with a photographer so that your profile picture, which features prominently on the new site, will look as good as you do. Email dfkr@hyphos.com to set up an appointment.
What Women Like
At Hyphos we’re providing a fun way to meet new people. In doing so, we’re designing an emotional experience helping to socialize the world around you. It is often pointed out that women are inherently more social than men (not saying I agree…), and thus we’re determined to understand what exactly it is that women like. It was with this goal in mind that our (only) female team member, Suraja, put together the following presentation. We enjoyed it and hope you do too!
What women like – A guide for web designers
View more presentations from hyphos
Green Drinks: Hyphos and Environmental Activism
One of the great things about launching a website geared toward meeting people is that you get to meet a lot of really interesting people in the process. It seems like the idea of a social network that encourages people to actually be social resonates with a lot of people. Some have been so intrigued that they’ve joined the Hyphos team at UConn, and I’m really thankful to be able to work with such an intelligent, enthusiastic, and diverse group of people. Others are just excited to use the site because they see how they could use it to help them pursue their own passions– and they can’t wait for the time when everyone uses Hyphos so that they can find even more people who share their interests.
Shane
Launch Day at UConn
One such person is Shane– I met him on launch day when he flew past our booth in a hurry to get to class, with, as always, business-casual clothes, retro frames, and a goatee. He’d said he’d be back because he was curious about Hyphos, and I’m glad he kept his word. Just as we were packing up the booth, he strolled up and started talking. As soon as I explained the site to him, he immediately saw its application in his life: he’s all about environmental activism and loves to meet people who share his passion. So he agreed to talk more some other time when I wasn’t struggling to pack all our promotional materials into my roommate’s car and running late to my evening class.
So a few weeks later, I sat down with him over dinner in the dining hall, and he told me a bit more about himself and his desire do be involved in environmentalism. He explained that living off campus has made it much harder for him to get involved in environmentally-focused activities with fellow students, concluding frustratedly: “I can’t be the only one who’s 26 and can’t come to campus at 9 PM for a club meeting, and there must be others interested in environmentalism here.” But with the current social technologies, his ability to find those other people is significantly limited. So instead of getting involved with things on campus, he went to some Green Drinks, environmentally-focused social gatherings organized through the website greendrinks.org.
Green Drinks
Green Drinks are all about meeting people. The About page on their site explains that, just like Hyphos, they’re trying to engineer what is normally left up to serendipity, those “oh-since-you-like-X-I have-to-introduce-you-to-so-and-so-who-knows-all-about-it” moments. Basically, environmentalists in a city get in touch through the website and arrange a night out where they share the latest that they’ve learned from environmental blogs, network with each other, and arrange trips to protests and the like. Through social networking at events like Green Drinks, Shane was actually able to arrange a trip down to Washington D.C. to protest the Keystone Pipeline.
He believes that by coordinating with existing contacts he’s made through Green Drinks, and new ones he’ll make with Hyphos, he will have many more opportunities to engage with others in the Storrs community to promote environmental awareness. He thinks Hyphos can be a means for college students to merge with their broader community to work toward share goals. He’s just brimming with ideas, and I’m looking forward to talking with him again to hear all the new ways he’s thought of using Hyphos.
If you want to meet people interested in Environmentalism, or anything you’re passionate about, head over to Hyphos.com, and get social!
Luis von Ahn: Massive-Scale Online Collaboration
If you have a Facebook or Twitter, you’re familiar with what a CAPTCHA is. In fact, nearly 750 million people have completed them. What you might not know, however, is how much value they provide. According to Luis von Ahn (see video below), about 200 million CAPTCHAs are typed every day. But if one assumes 10 seconds wasted per CAPTCHA, that’s a total of 500,000 hours thrown out every day.
That’s a lot of hours.
But Luis was determined to do something great with his invention. Instead of just proving you’re human and moving on after filling out a CAPTCHA, Luis created the reCAPTCHA. The reCAPTCHA grabs a word from an untranslatable text and leverages your ability to decipher it in order to digitize the world’s knowledge. Today, 750 million people have translated at least one word, which is a little over 10 percent of the world’s population.
This massive collaboration is extraordinary. If you consider only 100,000 people contributed to landing a man on the moon, imagine what can be achieved with 10% of the population!
As with reCAPTCHA and sites like Wikipedia, we at Hyphos are working to unite humanity in order to solve some really large and very interesting problems. We’re currently in the middle of a redesign with which to launch soon. If you’d like to get involved, head over to hyphos.com and join our guestlist. We are extremely excited to give each and every one of you the power to make a meaningful contribution to the world’s knowledge and well-being.
Happy Holidays from Hyphos
It’s that time of year again! The Holiday music has been playing since before Halloween but it now finally feels appropriate to listen to. The stop motion animation films about beloved holiday characters are on practically every channel and dessert is rarely skipped (that’s what New Year’s resolutions are for, right?).
It’s been an amazing year and we’d like to thank you for being part of the family. Because of your feedback, we’re hard at work on an exciting new UI we think you’ll love. Stay tuned and let’s make 2012 one to remember!
Happy Holidays from our family to yours!
Is social media really social?
Hyphos has been an incredible experiment aimed at utilizing technology to enable a greater social connectivity. We have over 1,000 users at UCLA and UConn signed up and using the site, but we’re still working hard to understand the underlying social dynamics taking place. How can we better bridge the online-offline gap? Which types of users are most adamant about meeting others, and are their needs being met? How will our mobile deployment make the process even better?
Luckily, like a good science experience, we have a number of really fun and innovative ideas we’ll be pushing in the ensuing weeks. In the meantime, I’ll posit this illustration and ask you, are you content with the current world of social media? Email us at ideas@hyphos.com or post on our facebook wall if you want to share your thoughts.
source: New Yorker, 2 August 2010
text: “I used to call people, then I got into e-mailing, then texting, and now I just ignore everyone.”
Moving to a New Place
A few months ago, I moved to Atlanta from Los Angeles. I started off pretty excited. I was going to get to explore a new city, start grad school, meet new people and all of that fun.
But then I started to wonder about all my friends and family that I wouldn’t see for a while. Not to mention working for Hyphos long distance, and that I’d be regularly missing out on perfect weather and wonderful food.
In the weeks leading up to the move, I felt like I was on roller coaster by myself. It was exciting, because it was a roller coaster and you get that adrenaline rush. It was scary, because I was on it alone, and it made me even more scared than usual of falling out of the seat (I don’t care what the laws of physics says).
These are common feelings when moving to a new place, though. At this point, I was kicking myself for not trying to convince Hyphos to launch in Atlanta before I moved. I knew that the next few weeks would be filled with learning a bunch of people’s names, courting new friends and trying to figure out if we like to do the same things. It takes a while to find that niche—the place you fit in, and the people who share your interests. I figured it out eventually, and am fortunate to be surrounded by many wonderful people here. But, let’s just say I have a whole new appreciation for what I help accomplish at Hyphos now.
So if you just moved, check us out. We can help you get past the first couple awkward weeks in a new place. Pretty neat, huh?
Happy Veteran’s Day from Hyphos
It’s A Small World After All
7 billion people—According to researchers the population on our lovely planet Earth has surpassed this number just yesterday.
Holy crap. That’s a lot.
Think of how many people you interact with daily. If I were to guess that about myself I’d say around thirty. Now compare that to 7 billion…yeah.
There are so many people we haven’t met, people that probably have some kick ass stories and insight. People we’d probably get along splendidly with.
We rely on serendipity (no, not the movie) and well-timed mutual connections to meet people who share our interests. But 7 billion people, man, it’s really not so small a world after all.
We can do better. Oh yeah, we can.
We have the Internet—we are more connected to the world than ever. We can harness that. You can harness that. Hyphos can harness that.
Hyphos is the serendipity that brings people together. Hyphos is “I have a friend you’d get along well with.” Hyphos is the new friend you run into, that you share laughs with, that you have fun with though you just met. Hyphos is people who inspire you, people you want to work with.
Hyphos is more. It’s where you discover what makes you tick. It’s where you can talk about LEGOs, and about marine biology. Say maybe you love eighties brat pack movies. Hyphos lets you converse with new people, and find a buddy to watch The Breakfast Club with.
You’ve heard us say it before, but Hyphos really is the closest group of friends you never knew you had. And in this not so small world, it’s nice to know that you can do something to make it just a little smaller.
