Hello everyone - it's been a while!

I was super busy with university and my mandatory internship in a software company for the past 6 months, so I haven't posted in a while. But that doesn't mean that I was inactive - I spent nearly every evening and every weekend working on SpaceHey. I didn't develop any new ground-breaking features, but instead I focused on improving the overall SpaceHey experience - making it smoother, more stable, easier to use and safer.

But before I get into the details, let's have a look at a huge milestone first: SpaceHey hit 1 Million registered users!! That's crazy!!

1 Million users

I launched SpaceHey at the end of 2020 - I had just graduated high-school, and the world was on Covid lockdown. I made SpaceHey, so my generation could experience the early days of social media - without a feed, likes and whatnot - but instead with colorful, customizable profiles, bulletins and forums. I didn't plan to create anything big - I just had some fun creating this site and improving my coding skills at the same time.

Still, three and a half years later - SpaceHey has indeed become big. One million people is an incredibly huge number of people - it's  simply crazy! If someone would've told my 18-year-old self in 2020, I would've never believed them. And yet - here we are. I am so incredibly thankful for all the support over the past three and a half years - the friends I made along the way and the lessons I've learned - both in running a community as big as this one as well as the technical challenges that came along.

One million people from all over the world have used SpaceHey so far - an independently run platform that does not track you and does not show you personalized feeds nor ads. My mission is not to become another big social network like Facebook or Twitter (I don't think I'll ever call it "X") - but rather trying to be different. More personal, more fun to use, and more humane. And I'm proud to say that this mission is still very much alive - no matter if there were 500 users or 1,000,000.

If you like SpaceHey and want to support the platform, you can support me here, and there is also a special #1 Million Merch drop available here to support SpaceHey. Your support - no matter if it's a donation or a Merch order - is what keeps SpaceHey running: thank you!!

Improving SpaceHey

I've stopped myself from working on any new features in the past months, but rather improve the existing ones and make SpaceHey overall a bit smoother. It wasn't easy - but I think it was worth it. You may have already noticed less downtime and less App crashes in the past weeks - and there are some more improvements coming soon.

I'm now also starting to work on some new features again - which is super fun - and I can't wait to share more with you soon (T8 👀) - so stay tuned!

Keeping SpaceHey safe

Another big topic I worked on in the past months is safety. As more and more people joined SpaceHey, the bots and spammers also increased. Spam, hate speech, and other kinds of harmful content has no place on SpaceHey - that's why a solution was needed, and eventually found.

The solution isn't actually one solution - but a combination of multiple. On the one hand, I've implemented more ways to prevent spam in the first place - and on the other hand, I've developed more ways to combat existing spam. I've expanded the volunteer moderation team and improved the ways the team can discover spam, react to reports and keep track of rule violations. I am immensely thankful to the volunteers helping me, and I think we are on a great path to keep SpaceHey safe.

If you come across harmful content on SpaceHey, please click the "Report" icon next to it, and we'll check it. Thank you for doing your part!

The next steps

I am super thrilled to keep working on SpaceHey - there are so many awesome, talented and fun people here. I can't wait to keep improving the site and the App and keep working on some great new features in the near future. I am super happy to have you all here, and I hope you are enjoying this journey as much as I do!

Thank you!

Last but not least, a huge thank you to every single one of you - you are the people who make SpaceHey what it is - you make it awesome. Thank you so, so much!

Have an awesome day & thank you for using SpaceHey!
An