I was going to complain about being the first given that I never used it, but indeed, Hi5 and My Space came an year later.

Forcing phone tab to add friend is genius kills boots and fake account instantly every social network dies due to fake connections.

It would be cool to leverage this proximity requirement to build a GnuPG web of trust. The one year 'weakening' would also help keep the web strong.

I love the internet.

We don’t need another company to hold our data and then change its mind later for the correct price.

Make the social network private, end to end encrypted, not harvested by your servers

Most ridiculous part of the story -> You can still make money from ADs in 2026.

Have you spent much time thinking about how the feed will work? Balancing the “quality” and enjoyment with the prioritization of “people you met in person”. I’m sure I’m far from the only one who misses the old Facebook feed, but curious what a modern take on that would look like.

Maybe you could get together with the SpaceHey guy:

https://spacehey.com

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25245740

Off topic, kind of, but this was genuine and genuinely nice to read.

The tap-to-connect constraint makes this work. Every social network removes friction; this one keeps it on purpose. Won't scale to billions, but maybe that's the point.