Have you heard? The old MySpace is back. Kind of.
Fully encoded by an 18-year-old German named An, Spacehey is an almost accurate copy of the design of the social network OG in its glory days in the early 2000s. According to Vice, the new network, which looks entirely like the old network, launched last November and has so far attracted around 55,000 users worldwide.
An told Vice he wanted to create a social network that offered better privacy and allowed users to be more creative.
“Thanks to older friends and the Internet, I heard a lot about [Myspace]. I came to the conclusion that you can’t find something like that today, ”said An.
He spent his free time during the quarantine scouring Internet files to make Spacehey look as authentic as possible to the classic version of MySpace.
And he nailed it.
MySpace has been restarted before, but never with the appearance of the original. This is what makes it attractive and Spacehey recreates it almost perfectly.
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Spacehey offers some features that were missing from the original MySpace, such as the option to add links to your other social media profiles on Twitter and other platforms that didn’t exist at the time. You can incorporate content from Spotify and YouTube, which did not exist at that time either. There is even a section with prefabricated and user-created layouts if you don’t want to code everything from scratch – although it’s half the fun of having a MySpace, er, Spacehey.
But all the main elements of classic MySpace are there. Friend’s space. Blogs. Interests. Comments. Even the small “online now” label. If you’re feeling a little inspired, a Spacehey user Corentin has a playlist from other users who have completely adorned their profiles with fun fonts, bright neon colors and animations that are almost too nostalgic to handle.
An says Spacehey is more than just a Myspace clone. He is very active on the platform, responding directly to users’ complaints and without fear of throwing the ban hammer on anyone who spreads hate speech and harassment on the network. This is not only a welcome change of pace in the overall social media landscape, but it is also in direct contrast to the approach that Facebook and Twitter have taken over the years in dealing with misinformation and hate groups.
MySpace taught me a lot of things in high school. He taught me how to use HTML and how to overload your page with flashy text and autoplay music made for a bad user experience. It taught me how to deal with creepers sliding on my DMs. But most of all, it was a much-needed haven for authoritarian parents who liked to eavesdrop on my text messages and listen to my calls when all I wanted was privacy. I’ve been looking for an alternative to Facebook for years and Spacehey has potential.
Of course, there are concerns about how feasible a throwback to an old social network can be once the novelty of nostalgia passes. There is no Spacehey app, for example, so if you want to access it on your phone, you’ll have to use your browser. But I like that. I miss the early days of cell phones that couldn’t connect to the internet, which made it so easy to disconnect from social commitments for days, even weeks. Spacehey may end up being a niche social media platform for a very specific user (say, an older millennial), but that’s okay.
My Spacehey page needs a lot of work. But I have had a lot of fun with my old Photobucket account, where I saved all the menu and background images I made for my old MySpace. It is a time capsule unique to the interests of my younger self: my obsession with CSI, Zach Braff at Garden state (my adult self doesn’t understand this anymore), little icons I made for some of my favorite Icon of Coil albums, A Perfect Circle and Don Hertzfeldt’s short film Rejected. I’m still a teenager in some ways, but I’ve obviously grown a lot since then.
It may not skyrocket to the peak of TikTok’s popularity, but Spacehey is a throwback to when curating a social media profile was fun and creative. And I’m having a lot of fun.