Say No to “Yo” and Join Team Hey

Announcing the Future of Human Communication

Brett Goldstein
silichronic labs
Published in
3 min readJun 24, 2014

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Your love interest texts you a flirtatious “heyy” on a Friday afternoon and you flirt back with a fun “hey hey hey.”

A playful conversation ensues.

Your night goes a little rougher than expected and you find yourself texting her a electrically charged “heyyyyyy” in the early twilight hours.

Events transpire.

She is gone in the morning when you awake, but she sends you a thoughtful “hey” as you lay there thinking of them.

You are falling in love…

A picture is worth a thousand words, but one word is worth a thousand more. (TWEET THIS)

In English, the word “hey” is both a greeting and an interjection, meant to express a sentiment or get someone’s attention. It shares connotations with words like “wow” and “yo” and can be used to express ideas as complex as “I’m still thinking about you” and “I want to have sex with you,” even with minimal context.

As a result, “hey” remains to be the most versatile short utterance in the English language — aside from the word “fuck,” of course.

A simple breakdown of the meaning of “hey” in the context of a conversation with a love interest. Go easy on the y’s guys, makes y’all look desperate.

Introducing Hey

Considering the power of such a simple word, we set out to build a mobile experience to capture and harness it to revolutionize the way humans communicate.

Kyle sends a quick “hey” to the user to say he’s waiting outside in a car. The user announced on Facebook that he will be starting work at a company that Jordan works at, Jordan sends an excited “hey hey hey.” Jessica is just looking to score…

Hey allows you to send variations of the word “hey” to your friends just by tapping on their name.

  • Single tap (“hey”) to quickly grab your friend’s attention, or convey that they’re on your mind.
  • Multi-tap (“hey hey” +n*hey ) for a playful greeting or response.
  • Tap and hold (“heyy” +n*y) to show your “friend” your flirty side.
  • Tap and shake (“HEY”) to convey how pissed off you really are.

This patent-pending Tap-Hold-Shake functionality is meant to allow users to utilize the expressiveness of “hey” to convey complicated messages even beyond what is outlined above.

Advanced users could utilize Morse Hey to communicate any message they please, though we expect most users to use Tap-Hold-Shake for booty calls.

We believe in the power of words and the beauty of simplicity. Join our revolution, join #TeamHey and #SayNoToYo (TWEET THIS).

Hey… sign up for our beta launch here.

Follow me on Twitter here — its gonna be a good time.

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Brett Goldstein
silichronic labs

pm @google, musician @MonteDelMonte, prev. cognition researcher @ucberkeley