Social shared spaces from Hey Wall

Hey! Wall is now live. You're looking at it. Welcome!

What's Hey! Wall?

Hey! Wall is a fun website that Andrew and I have been working on over the past few weeks. It's a bit like "the wall" on social networks such as Facebook, but aimed more at groups of friends or people who just want an easy way to leave messages and share stuff like photos, videos and links.

You can create your own wall and invite some friends to use it. Everyone with access to the wall can add stuff and see what's going on. You can create as many walls as you like for different groups of people, topics or subjects.

What would you create a wall for?

• Just for fun: send messages, share links, photos and videos with a group of friends
• Keep colleagues in the loop: leave messages for things your workmates want to know about, without bothering them with loads of email
• Show clients some progress: post messages, files and images (mockups, screenshots, etc) so your clients can see where you are up to.

Why not just use Facebook?

There's definitely some overlap, but this is just easier. It's also more private because the stuff you send is shared only with only the people you have invited to the wall, instead of every one of your social network "friends" seeing what you do.

Why not just use email?

Email is fine for one-to-one, but can be annoying with groups and it's nice to have a place where all the related messages are kept together. Also, a lot of people have work email addresses copy everything to their boss; that could be embarrassing.

Does the world really need another social network?

No, probably not. Luckily, Hey! Wall isn't a social network.

We like the idea that "the Internet is the social network". Instead of being trapped in one giant website controlled by one company which is eager to sell you out for a buck, you get to choose from different websites and services and have them all loosely tied together. Developments like OpenID and OpenSocial are a step in this direction. For our humble part, we offer walls that aren't locked up in a big social network.

Can I use Hey! Wall now?

Please do! This is the first public release. There might be a few bugs or features we haven't added yet, but it mostly works. We'd call it "beta" if it wasn't so cliché. If you find any bugs or want to suggest improvements just click on the "Send feedback" link and let us know.

To get started you can add a wall, invite a couple of friends and see how it goes.