Heyo’s a young Blacksburgh, VA company that makes a platform that allows you make a Facebook page, and also a Facebook page-related mobile app. Trouble is, they ask you to pay for the service. But considering that their clients are companies like NBC, that’s both a good thing, and a bad thing.
Heyo, formerly known as Lujure Media, started with 3 people in 2011, and then in 2012 received funding. It was started by Lujure President Nathan Latka and co-founders Josh Gunter and Brian Putt, who started the company in 2011, building on freelance work Latka was doing for other students.
Heyo has captured and is taking advantage of the tech knowledge gap that exists between people who understand how to build even a simple social media app like a Facebook Page, and those who are too intimidated to try it on their own. Trouble is many of those people hold marketing positions in large firms and have to justify their keep.
Enter Heyo.
What’s impressive about Heyo is the spirit they approach their work, as shown in this video, and in their incorporation of an affiliate program to help spread the number of users of their platform. But, here’s the video:
And, uh, here’s another video, a parody of The Office intro:
But then there’s the product.
I don’t know if anyone’s calculated the size of this part of the social media industry, but just cursorily I’d say about 7 of ten people I encounter don’t know how to set up a Facebook Page – 6 of ten people I know do, but that’s a smaller number than the people I encounter.
What that comes to is anyone’s guess, and just how far a firm can go just on Facebook will be an interesting question to see the answer to unfold over time.
It’s also interesting that firms like Heyo and Vitrue, which was purchased by Oracle for $300 million and like Heyo basically provides a Facebook Page template, started in the South, in that case, in Atlanta.
The South is rapidly becoming the center of automated social media tech, with its livelyhood gained from platforms created in The San Francisco Bay Area.
Stay tuned.