MellohD

For those who don't know, SpacHey is a recreation of 2000s MySpace.  You can customize your profile, write blogs, join groups, talk with friends and talk in forums. Which all sounds great, but its biggest downfall to it is its lack of active users.  Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the intended use of the website is to find people through forums, send them a friend request, and begin chatting.  With a system like this, I feel its very hard to grow your platform with how "isolating" it can make you feel.  It feels very hard to find people with similar interests as you due to the lack of diversity in the small amount of active users that SpaceHey does contain.  Sure, you can create a group and a forum about a topic you like, but waiting for a response takes so long(days, sometimes weeks depending on how "niche" the topic is) that I feel like most users get bored and move onto something else.  That's what happened in my personal experience.

And ultimately, that seems to be most old web revival projects downfall, a lack of active members.  Which is a shame, because I truly do like SpaceHey, I like the novelty of being able to design my own website, and post little status updates for my friends to see but I don't have any friends on SpaceHey to see my updates to begin with.  You might think the issue is that there is a lack of people that is interested in the old web, but I would think otherwise.

Almost everyone my age I talk to online has a customized "strawpage" which is (from what I can tell) basically a modern homepage; but its much easier to create.  And everyone who I've talked to about the concept of SpaceHey and making HTML websites have all expressed the desire to make their own homepage or enjoyed the concept of SpaceHey but never stuck around because there wasn't a lot to do.  I think the solution to this is to advertise more outside of small circles and add live chatrooms. 

In order to bring back the old web, I think we need to start using modern web tactics to garner more users for these sites, which might not be favorable to some people.  From my 16 year old perspective, I think my peers would be a lot more interested in SpaceHey if there was just more to interact with.  I also think live chatrooms with dedicated topics(that you can create and perhaps moderate like forums) would be a fun addition to the website.  Of course that's all a double edge sword.  The more people come, the more hostile and weird the environment could become.  Along with the fact that SpacHey would most likely need more dedicated moderators (and an upgrade to the site if enough people are on it at once) 

SpaceHey has a lot of competition to deal with, the biggest ones off the top of my head mostly being Discord and Tik Tok, but I think it already has a unique concept going for it that no other modern social media has anymore.  Its customization and 2000s aesthetic gives it a unique charm that would just be more enjoyable if it had more interaction.  For example, on discord if I want to talk to people about, lets say, marble hornets, I would just look up "marble hornets discord server" and start chatting.  If I wanted to post a forum dedicated to talking about marble hornets on SpaceHey, it would take days, maybe even weeks to get a response out of anybody if any at all due the just sheer lack of people.  I want to use SpaceHey like a social media but I just can't, which sucks because again I just really love the amount of customization within the website.

So in conclusion, SpacHey is a great website that has a unique and charming concept going for it but is killed by its lack of advertising to broader groups and more immediate ways of talking and I think this sentiment could be extended to a lot of old web revival projects.  Anyways, this post is kind of unrefined but I did that on purpose cause I'd like to spark a debate.  Leave a comment, DM me through my profile or email me at mellohd44@gmail.com if you want to talk more about this with me !! :]