OhHey

Framing the Problem

What is the problem you are trying to solve? Who does it affect?

Of all the connections you've made on social media, how many have you actually messaged recently?

It’s easy to get caught up in day-to-day life and unintentionally neglect reconnecting with people who once shared meaningful experiences with us. 

Why does this happen? 

Sometimes, it's the hesitation of not knowing what to say, the awkwardness of reaching out, or simply the absence of a small nudge to keep those connections alive.What is the problem you are trying to solve? Who does it affect?

Idea Explanation

What is your idea? How does it fix the problem?

That’s where OhHey! comes in—a smart platform / extension designed to help you maintain friendships and stay engaged with what your friends are up to.

1. Personalised Reconnection Suggestions
   OhHey analyses your profile and connections, identifying three people each day whom you haven’t exchanged messages with in the last six months or more.
   

2. Context-Aware Recommendations
   The platform bases its suggestions on your recent activity. For example, if you and a friend, Lilione, recently posted from the same location, liked the same content, or followed similar influencers, OhHey will highlight this as a great opportunity to reconnect.
   

3. AI-Powered Icebreakers
   Struggling with what to say? OhHey provides AI-generated icebreaker messages tailored to your shared interests. You can send the message as is, regenerate a new one, or tweak it to make it more personal.
   

4. Suggesting Meetups
   Beyond conversations, OhHey encourages real-world interactions. The platform suggests convenient meetup locations and shared activities, making it easier to turn digital connections into lasting relationships.
   

With OhHey, reconnecting becomes effortless, helping you strengthen meaningful relationships in a world where staying in touch is often overlooked.

Implementation

We would be utilising user data that already exists on the instagram platform like messages and previously liked posts. 

Backend endpoint

Retrieves 3 user connections that - 

• Have previously sent messages, dated more than 6 months ago

• Have the most common interest within the last 2 weeks (Liked the same post/ attended the same location/ followed the same profile)

• Have not had a ohHey suggestion in the last year

Generates a rating out of 3 based on the amount of common interests 

Saves the connections in a new table so we can analyse which suggestions result in reconnection - 

OhHey connections

• User

• Suggested connection (user)

• Connections - [

  • Connection type - same profile/same location/same post

  • Connection - the post they liked (eg. a particular restaurant)

• ]

• Follow up - True/false

• Connection rating

Frontend

Presents users on the platform, their similar activity, and generates AI recommended messages and events based on their connection

AI - Using ChatGPT, we would provide it with their common interests and request to write an introductory message. 

Example of connection data - 

Priya Patel

Last messaged 7 months ago

You both now follow Jane Doe, You both liked a post from HackathonParty

AI message - 

“Oh hey! I see you also like HackathonParty? There is a hackathon coming up on the 9th March, would you like to come with me?”

It gives them an option to send the generated message or their own message.

Challenges

What did you struggle with? How did you overcome it?

There are so many scenarios about why people want to reconnect, and each with their own challenges. Interpreting the challenge led to many different potential avenues - do we want help to stay in contact with people we’re already connected with, or build new connections from people we used to know in the past. These two goals would be handled differently so narrowing down our focus to a specific idea to handle within the hackathon was a challenge. Our original idea was a new social media that would handle both of these - one page for people you are connected with, with alerts to remind you to respond and suggestions for meetups or conversation topics, and another page for building new connections from people you may have known in the past, eg. from school.

The problem with the original idea is that it would involve persuading people to sign up to a new social media platform in large enough numbers to make the platform useful. We decided to pivot to creating an extension of existing social media platforms.

One problem we considered was what if someone wanted to reconnect with you but you would rather keep them in the past - our original idea was to restrict the number of messages that someone could send in the original connection request and then hide the messages if they were unanswered for more than 14 days. Working within existing social media platforms gets around this issue as you can assume that if someone is already connected on social media then they are open to reconnecting.

A challenge we would think about going forwards is what if you want to reconnect with someone and you don’t use the same social media platforms as when you met?

Accomplishments

What did you learn? What did you accomplish?

• We built a chrome extension and a demo webapp to show how the functionality would work within the Instagram phone app.

• Crazy 8s

• Explored many ideas

• Research into social media and lonliness, as well as reconnection to understand the problem better

Next Steps

What are the next steps for your project? How can you improve it?

Expanding to other platforms

LinkedIn - a way to reconnect with connections who are in an industry that you want to reach out to - you’re looking for a new job and want to talk to connections about opportunities they have heard about, what’s going on in their sector at the moment? OhHey gives you a way to start the conversation, and highlights key people who might be the best to approach.

Event connections

A partnership with event/ticketing platforms to create a way of reaching out to people.

Examples of scenarios -

• Those in attendance that you chatted to but didn't get their contact info

• Acquaintances that are going to the same event as you that you could reach out to ahead of the event.

Examples of companies -

• Meetup

• Eventbrite

• Dice

• Resident Advisor