Anton Röhm had big plans for the summer of 2020. As a high school senior in Germany, he was ready to finish his studies and travel the world before starting university. But like many dreams that year, COVID-19 threw a wrench in his plans. Stuck at home, the 18-year-old, who had been coding since the age of 13, turned to his passion for programming. One of his projects stood out: a nostalgic attempt to recreate MySpace, the early 2000s social network that had long faded before Röhm even entered high school.
Despite MySpace’s decline, the platform had taken on a sort of mystique for Röhm, representing a bygone era of the internet. Intrigued, he recreated the look and feel of MySpace using static HTML and CSS, and shared it on Twitter and Reddit. To his surprise, people loved it.
“In the first few weeks, there were over 2,000 or 3,000 users already, which was crazy,” Röhm recalls. The demand was so high that Röhm realized he was onto something bigger than a side project. And thus, SpaceHey was born.
Initially, the project wasn’t functional beyond its nostalgic design, but Röhm quickly got to work. He began adding essential features like user login and profile customization, steadily building the platform’s infrastructure. What started as a passion project during lockdown transformed into a growing social network that crossed the one million-user mark by August 2023.
Now 22 and balancing university studies with SpaceHey’s development, Röhm is committed to keeping the platform true to its roots. SpaceHey distinguishes itself from modern social networks by focusing on user experience over algorithms. There’s no endless feed or “like” button vying for attention, and the platform encourages personal expression through profile customization, much like the original MySpace.
“There’s no algorithm on SpaceHey, no likes, no feed. People can use it whenever they like,” Röhm says, noting that this freedom helps avoid the toxicity seen on platforms like X (formerly Twitter).
Moderation is a growing challenge, but Röhm, with the help of five volunteer moderators, keeps it manageable. The site’s structure and user-driven profile customization have helped avoid the rampant issues of hate speech and polarizing content that plague other platforms. Instead, SpaceHey has faced more issues with spam, which Röhm is actively tackling through community-driven reporting and moderation tools.
In late 2023, Röhm launched SpaceHey’s mobile app for iOS and Android, bringing the retro platform into the modern era. He continues to work on bringing more features from the website to the app while maintaining the platform’s core ethos of simplicity and safety. Röhm envisions new features that blend the old-school charm of MySpace with the needs of today’s social media users but is careful to keep SpaceHey distinct from the attention-driven nature of platforms like Facebook or X.
“My goal for SpaceHey is to have a safe, friendly environment for everyone,” Röhm says, emphasizing that the platform is built to foster genuine connections without the distractions or manipulations of modern algorithms. What began as a fun lockdown project has become a testament to a simpler, more civil time on the internet—one that Röhm hopes will continue to resonate with users seeking a break from today’s polarizing platforms.
