How Helm works: your questions, answered.

Helm is the first interest media platform: social media you actually own. You pick your interests, your feed follows what you love, and you own your audience instead of renting it. Short video, photos, Stash, podcasts, long-form, LIVE streaming, and live social shopping all live in one app, with no ads, no data sales, and family safety built in.

Create a free account, pick your interests from Helm's 37-interest taxonomy, and your feed fills with what you love. Prefer a simple timeline? Switch to the chronological option any time. From there you can post in any format, go LIVE, shop live social shopping, follow Podcast Shows, and support creators through The Crew.

Yes. Helm is free to join and free to use, and no invite is required. Visit helmsocial.app, choose Sign up, and you are in within minutes.

Helm has seven Who it's for: Kids, Teens, Members, Creators, Business, Brands, and Parents. Kids and Teens accounts are COPPA-safe with parental oversight, and Parents run the household from the Family dashboard.

Helm is a web app you can install to your home screen. On Android and desktop Chrome, use the Install app button. On iPhone, open the Share menu and choose Add to Home Screen. There is nothing to download from an app store.

Interest media is a new category of social media that you actually own. Instead of a company steering your feed with an ad-driven algorithm, you pick your interests, you control what you see, and you own your audience instead of renting it. There are no ads and no data sales, so your attention is never the product. Helm is the first interest media platform.

Traditional social media rents you an audience and decides your reach with an ad-driven algorithm built to maximize engagement. Interest media flips that: you own your audience, you control your feed and your algorithm, and the platform runs no ads and sells no data. On Helm, family safety is designed in and creators get paid.

You choose what you love from a 37-interest taxonomy, and Helm recommends content that matches your interests. Want a simple timeline instead? There is a chronological option too. You pick your interests; the feed follows what you love.

Every Helm post carries interest tags chosen from one shared list of 37 interests, and each tag shows its current vote count. Tap the caret on a tag to vote it up. Votes are public, anyone reading a post can vote, and they feed the ranking, so the community decides where a post belongs. If a post is tagged wrong, the votes say so and it stops surfacing for that interest.

No. Helm uses one shared interest list instead of free-text hashtags. That way the same topic always lands in the same place, and nobody can invent a tag to game where their post shows up.

Every format lives in one profile and one feed: short video, photos, Stash posts, Podcasts with audio and video episodes, long-form writing, and LIVE streams. Approved sellers can also list products for live social shopping.

Stash is Helm's home for ideas worth keeping: quotes, book takeaways, and one-paragraph mini-essays. It is built for people who love learning and sharing what they learn.

No. Helm runs no ads and never sells your data, so your attention is never the product. Your feed exists to show you what you love, not to keep you scrolling past advertisements.

Yes. Your Helm profile is one profile that links every one of your other platforms, so the audience you have built anywhere can find all of you in one place.

Go live straight from your browser camera, or stream professionally with OBS using WHIP. Every Helm LIVE includes real-time chat, reactions, goals, a leaderboard, polls, and moderators to keep chat healthy.

Fans buy coins and send virtual gifts from Helm's original mascot gift catalog, including coin-tier gifts, interactive gifts, and VIP gifts, earning gifter levels as they go. Gifts convert to diamonds for the creator, and diamonds convert to USD.

Heart Me is a one-tap way for a fan to show a creator daily support during a LIVE, and Creator Circle spotlights the supporters closest to a creator. Both are built into every Helm LIVE.

Helm Leagues are weekly competitions for LIVE creators. Your league earns you a profile ring your whole community can see, and your Gift Gallery showcases the gifts your fans have sent. Rankings refresh weekly, so there is always a fresh climb.

Live social shopping on Helm is shopping built directly into a live, social platform. Approved sellers list a product catalog with variants and inventory, buyers pay in seconds with buy-now checkout powered by Stripe Connect and Stripe Tax, and creators feature products and earn commission. In-stream product pinning, so fans can buy during a Live without leaving the stream, is rolling out soon.

Sellers apply inside Helm and are approved before they can list. Once approved, you build a product catalog with variants and inventory, take payment through buy-now checkout with Stripe Connect and Stripe Tax, and manage orders and shipments from your shop.

Coming soon
In-stream product pinning with buy-during-a-Live checkout is coming soon. Today, creators feature products from approved sellers and buyers purchase in seconds with Helm's buy-now checkout.

Coming soon
Shopify catalog sync for sellers is coming soon. Until it rolls out, sellers manage their catalog, variants, and inventory directly inside Helm.

My Store is your seller storefront on Helm. You add products with descriptions, photos, shipping and variants, publish them, and shoppers browse your store page and check out in a tap with secure Stripe payments. Sellers can also sync an existing catalog from Shopify instead of adding products by hand.

Approved sellers can request verification for their store. Helm reviews the request, and once it is approved the storefront and its products show a Verified or Official Brand badge so shoppers can tell who they are buying from.

Creator commission, where a creator features products from an approved seller and earns a share of the sales they drive, is in development and not live yet. Creators earn today through Live gifts and Crew memberships, and keep 50% to 60% depending on their weekly fleet.

Only with a parent's approval. Helm's family spend-approval routes any purchase from a kid or teen account to a parent before it goes through.

Yes. Helm Podcasts support both audio and video episodes, published right alongside your other content, so your podcast reaches the audience you already own instead of starting from zero on another app.

Podcast Shows are Spotify-style series on Helm. Fans follow a show, rate it, and browse its episode list, and every episode can be liked, commented on, shared, gifted, and saved.

The Crew is Helm's creator membership. Your biggest fans subscribe for members-only posts and Stash, members-only LIVE streams, and member badges with profile rings, and the subscription revenue goes to the creator.

Monetization is built in: virtual gifts convert coins to diamonds to USD, Crew memberships bring recurring support, and shopping commissions reward creators who sell. Creators onboard with Stripe Connect and receive automatic weekly cash-outs. Payments are rolling out in a managed way as Helm grows.

Creator Insights puts your views, engagement, and earnings in one dashboard, so you always know what is working and what your work is worth.

Yes, Helm is family-safe by design. Kids and Teens accounts are COPPA-safe, DMs are protected by allowlist safety, a parent approvals queue reviews activity, and moderation backed by community guidelines protects everyone.

Parents set screen time and downtime, control who can DM their child, and review an approvals queue. Families can also require family-only LIVE, with one-tap stop and parent notification built in.

The Family dashboard is your household's home base on Helm: chores and stars, a meal planner, a shared calendar, and rewards with redemptions. It turns Helm into a tool your family actually runs the week with.

Yes. Helm has a family-only LIVE option so a stream is visible to family only. Every LIVE also includes one-tap stop, and parents are notified when their kid goes live.