Howl App Strives To Foster Safety, Connections, Help Between LI Neighbors

HUNTINGTON, NY — Mike Hartofilis still recalls the terror of when his 3-year-old daughter, Annie, wandered off his Huntington property and went missing a few years ago.

The Hartofilis family had a heavily wooded backyard, it was pool season, and they were new to the neighborhood. He did not know his neighbors yet, and he felt other social media platforms were not fast or local enough to help, he said. One neighbor helped the Hartofilises knock on doors and search for Annie.

"After 20 harrowing minutes, I found Annie near a pool in another yard," Hartofilis told Patch. "That moment changed everything for me. I realized safety isn’t just about alarms or emergency contacts — it’s about being able to quickly connect with the people around you when it matters most."

Hartofilis took the experience of losing Annie to develop an app called Howl. The app is a hyperlocal community platform that connects neighbors in real-time based on proximity. The app strives to ensure posts and updates reach the people who are in the best position to respond — immediate neighbors.

"Howl’s story is deeply personal for me," Hartofilis said.

Howl is set to launch in Huntington, but Hartofilis has plans to expand street by street, town by town, to all of Long Island, and ultimately, New York and beyond. The app is free for users and can be downloaded through app stores.

Howl sends urgent alerts like a post pet or family member, but it can also be used for fun events like organizing block parties.

"By cutting through the digital noise, Howl fosters meaningful connections and empowers communities to stay informed, engaged, and supportive," Hartofilis said.

Howl, conceptually, was solely a security app before the team added other design features.

"When we were a security app and it was just a call among wolves, it was a cry for help," Hartofilis said. "You would call on members of your pack, and they would find you through a howl. It’s a form of communication. It was a unique word, and the domain was available, although expensive. I'm very happy that’s where we went."

The Howl team has rain mailers and digital ads to invite users in Huntington, to start. Prospective users receive a custom, unique QR code associated with their home. Scanning it and downloading the app verifies they are residents of the town.

"We have a verification process, whereas on these other community platforms, a lot of people can create dozens of accounts and anonymous, fake profiles," Hartofilis said. "We take verification seriously with Howl."

Hartofilis said Howl was born out of passion over the family's concerns with a traditional home security system in the event of an intrusion or medical emergency. He said in some cases, traditional home security systems are "essentially useless."

"We have four kids in and out of the house," Hartofilis said. "We would never activate it during the day. It just felt redundant to have a security system that was not on while I was away from home. I wanted a way to protect my wife and kids while I was away at work. Having this voice alert that could instantaneously sound an alarm, it makes sense to me. I saw the value in something I was almost building for myself. That was the inspiration for it. I was thinking, naturally, if I find value in this and I understand the use case, and it was a means of providing safety for free. That meant a lot to me. It was very much driven by passion, and I think that’s ultimately what led me to pivot into this community platform. Into evolving the app and the safety feature into something much more."

Howl is proximity based, and users verify their home address. If there is an incident in a community, such as a lost dog, content is tagged with a longitude and latitude location.

"A dog runs away. Instead of posting it to the abyss of [other social media] where it gets lost among 20 different neighborhoods, on Howl, you pin an event or occurrence that happens to the map, and it’s tagged with a location," Hartofilis explained. "It is sharing that content and prioritizing that content for those neighbors in close proximity to the event. It’s sending a push notification to everyone within a mile of that event. It’s engaging the people who are in a position to help and prioritizing that content for them. You’re reaching your target audience as opposed to randomly putting it out there to a group of 20,000 people in a Huntington online group."

Users, upon signing up for Howl, are placed into a "street pack": verified neighbors who live on one street and share the same street name. The app functions like a group text where people can engage neighbors in real time.

"If I were to send a message to my street pack, that would send a push notification to everybody on the street," Hartofilis said. "In addition to that, if it was urgent and important and I wanted to cut through other digital noise to deliver something that was urgent, we also have a feature called 'urgent,' which we will rebrand as a 'howl.'"

A user can toggle a message to a "howl," which will send a custom ping to others' phones with a special sound effect to make sure the recipient knows it is important and urgent. Hartofilis said it is more on brand and less jarring than an amber alert.

"That applies to lots of use cases where my wife has to get in touch with me, and we’re in a pack together, but it comes to the point where I just anticipate my phone is flooded with both calls and texts," Hartofilis said. "You almost become numb to it. You hear the pings and assume, 'This is one of my group texts,' or the phone rings, and you say, 'OK, this is another scammer.' Even on those intimate channels, people that I know and people I care about, such as my wife or family members, it’s difficult to cut through that and get in touch with somebody. This is the means of doing that, both for neighbors and loved ones. That’s a bit of a concept around sending a 'howl.'"

Howl has other features beyond emergency use, Hartofilis said. People can create and share events with their neighbors.

"We don’t want to pigeonhole ourselves into being a safety app, because we find that safety is a byproduct of being connected to your neighbors," Hartofilis said. "Important content is not exclusive to safety. We want to connect people about playdates or block parties, or with the young family that just moved on the block ... This is a platform that can facilitate that."

Hartofilis, a father of four who coaches multiple sports teams for his children, said Howl could be used if a child's parent does not show up to pick their son or daughter up on time from a practice. A parent could find a fellow parent in the Howl directory and message them.

"In a lot of cases, guys like me, they don’t have people’s phone numbers in their contacts," Hartofilis said. "I’m not quick to ask other dads for their phone numbers; there is something awkward about it. You don’t know you need to get in touch with somebody until you finally do."

Criminal alerts or hyperlocal news relevant to a community can also be pulled in by Howl.

"I think that’s what separates us from other platforms that would prioritize polarizing content or content that people engage with," Hartofilis said. "It’s not really relevant to the local community, but it’s engaging because it’s a polarizing topic. People are viewing it or clicking on it. On Howl, we are prioritizing that local content. Our content is grounded by a location. It’s not like a political debate. It’s an actual happening in your community."

Howl threads have topics of conversation that Hartofilis said can serve as a jumping off point for conversations between verified neighbors.

"Typically, if you put your name and face on your profile, you are much more likely to act as you would in the real world. That’s something we’re encouraging. Act as you would on Howl as if you would in real life."