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A MySpace clone site called SpaceHey surpassed the million user mark last week.
The founder, 22-year-old student Anton Röhm, started working on the website during the pandemic when he was just 18 years old. The pandemic restrictions prevented Röhm from traveling the world as he had originally planned before starting his studies – so he started programming for fun.
“I thought, hey, why don't I build something like MySpace back then, but just new and with the basic functions, the creative freedom and in addition with solving the problems that I see in social media today,” Röhm said in a lecture in Hamburg in 2021. “And that's how SpaceHey was born.”
Related: I tried Airchat, the hottest new social media app in Silicon Valley – here’s how it works
Röhm, who may not have been old enough to sign up when MySpace launched in 2003, wrote in a thoughtful post that he created the first version of SpaceHey in about three weeks.
SpaceHey has the same look and feel as MySpace, with profile pages, blogs, and instant messaging. It differs from the original in that users can fully customize their profiles with HTML and CSS code, share posts on other platforms, and embed content like YouTube videos.
Röhm launched the site in November 2020 as “a circa 2007 MySpace with a modern tech stack,” and it gained traction organically on Product Hunt and Hacker News. Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian even created a profile in November 2020.
I finally have one of those SpaceHey profiles everyone is talking about ??https://t.co/9d7TVWiTGy
– Alexis Ohanian ?? (@alexisohanian) November 30, 2020
Last month, the platform surpassed the one million user mark.
“On SpaceHey, there is no algorithm, no likes, no feed,” Röhm said in an interview with Fast Company on Thursday. He added that he is trying to differentiate the platform from other social media platforms like Facebook and X by “not having content that is constantly pulling you in and demanding your attention.”
Röhm echoed an anti-algorithm sentiment previously expressed by people like then-Twitter and current X founder Jack Dorsey. Dorsey declared in June that “we are programmed by discovery algorithms” and that the real debate is not about free speech but about free will.
Related: Jack Dorsey says social media has an algorithm problem, and Elon Musk agrees: 'We are being programmed'
Röhm's app also joins a growing list of popular social media alternatives. The anti-AI app Cara, for example, gained more than half a million users in a week in June by banning AI art. One reason for its success is Meta's statement that you can use photos, art and posts on its platforms to train your AI; Cara was an anti-AI alternative to Instagram at the right time.
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