Already impressed y2k era technology, some members of Gen Z wondered what these early, simpler social networks were like. Now they can get insight thanks to a new app called noplaceMore than a decade after it fell from the most visited site in the US, Myspace is reinventing some aspects of it.
The app was officially launched earlier this month and for a short time 1st place in the Apple App Store. Dreamed up by Gen Z founder Tiffany Zhong, noplace presents itself as both a throwback and an alternative to mainstream social media algorithms and the creative culture that comes with them. “I miss how social media was back then … where it was actually social, people would post random updates about their lives,” Zhong told Engadget. “You had a sense of where people were in time and space.”
Although Zhong said he never experienced Myspace firsthand — he was in elementary school in the early 2000s — no place can capture many of the platform’s signature elements. Each user starts with a short profile, to which they can add personal details such as relationship status and age, as well as a free-form ‘about me’ section. Users can also share their interests and provide details about what they are currently watching, playing, reading and listening to. Yes, they can post music videos. There’s even a “top 10” to highlight your best friends (not sure how many Gen Z knows trauma Myspace feature influenced my generation).
Myspace, of course, had a unified “design language” years before smartphone apps became the dominant means of browsing social media. But highly customizable noplace profiles still manage to capture the vibe of custom HTML and contrasting color schemes that distinguished many Myspace pages and websites on the web in the early 2000s.
There are other familiar features as well. All new users are automatically friends with Zhong, who confirms that this is a reference to Tom Anderson, otherwise known as “Myspace Tom.” The app encourages users to add interests called “stars” and search for like-minded friends.
Despite the many similarities — the app was originally called nospace — Zhong says noplace is more than just recreating the look and feel of Myspace. The app has a complex gamification scheme where users are rewarded with in-app badges as they reach different “levels” as they use the app more. The system isn’t really explained in the app — Zhong says it’s intentionally “vague” — but levels correspond to different actions, such as posting on friends’ walls and interacting with other users’ posts. There’s also a massive Twitter-like central feed where users can send quick updates to everyone in the app.
According to Zhong, it might feel a little chaotic, but early adopters are already using it in some unexpected ways. “About 20% of posts in the last week were questions,” he says, comparing that to the trend of Gen Z using the likes of TikTok and YouTube. search engine. “What we’re building is essentially becoming a social search engine. Everyone thinks it’s like a social network, but because people are already asking questions…we’re building features where you can ask questions and get crowd-sourced answers.”
It may seem ambitious for a (so far) briefly viral social app, but it has nowhere near the share of influential backers. Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian is among the company’s investors. And Zhong himself once made headlines in his previous role as a junior analyst at a prominent VC firm.
So far, neither place feels like a Myspace-inspired innovation to me, although I’m not the target demographic. But as someone who was a real Myspace teenager, I often find myself grateful that my teenage years came long before Instagram or TikTok. Not because Myspace was simpler than today’s social media, but because it was so easy to log out.
Zhong sees the difference a little differently, not as a matter of dial-up connections providing a separation between online and offline, but rather a matter of prioritizing self-expression cover authority. “You’re just chasing the number of followers, not the real you,” says Zhong. “It makes sense how social networks evolve this way, but these are media platforms. It’s not a social network anymore.”
