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Philadelphia Woman Creates Mobile Site To Help Twitter Users Feel Less Lonely

By Melony Roy

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A Port Richmond woman is using social media to connect with users who feel lonely.

The Lonely Project is a mobile website that displays tweets about loneliness. It's programmed to search for posts on Twitter that use the words "I" and "lonely." It displays only the words of the tweet, you wont see the name of the user, their profile picture, or location.

When the tweet is loaded, creator Lauren Hallden, says you only have two options.

"You can either reload a different tweet or you can respond to the one it gives you. If you choose to respond the project's dedicated Twitter account will go and talk to that person."

It sends out a message through The Lonely Project's Twitter handle that reads "Someone over here wanted you to know that you're not alone."

"People quote song lyrics alot which I find really interesting. The one I see most often is this crazy Three Doors Down song which is about a decade old."

As for the future of the project, Hallden wants to make the site more interactive

"I would love for there to be a way to search for people who are close to you, so you can talk to people in your area who are feeling the same way as you."

Hallden launched the site in April as part of her independent study at the University of Penn.

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