[HN Gopher] Show HN: I Rebuilt MySpace from 2007 ___________________________________________________________________ Show HN: I Rebuilt MySpace from 2007 Author : partyguy Score : 478 points Date : 2020-11-29 15:42 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (spacehey.com) (TXT) w3m dump (spacehey.com) | JimWestergren wrote: | 18 year old, cool man. Respect. | partyguy wrote: | thank you :D | blhack wrote: | This is really great you guys. Good job! It really makes me | realize how much I miss the old internet. | gabereiser wrote: | Haha, I love the logo. Just a peg person saying "hey". This takes | me back for sure. I would ditch the footer disclaimer though | unless you really are trying to recreate MySpace in its entirety, | which is a legal grey area. I'm all on board for a MySpace-esque | experience again. | aerovistae wrote: | I'm curious, is password storage using 2007 techniques too? Or | are things like that a little more up-to-date? :P | cft wrote: | Since all MySpace passwords have been leaked online (my email | often gets spammed with my real MySpace password in the | subject), why not implement logins with that database? | landerwust wrote: | Totally loving this. Did you reverse engineer the layouts from | screenshots? Please tell me somewhere there is a snippet of | original HTML snarfed from archive.org :) | | Finally you're totally missing a beat here -- MySpace lived and | died by its community of indie bands. Ditch that dodgy mainstream | iTunes Music wrapper and make the actual music function work | again. You never know, you might strike a nostalgic retro chord | within some niche of the indie community (and definitely that's | where this thing should be shared!) | partyguy wrote: | Hey, I'm An, the creator of SpaceHey! Thank you!! Yes, I looked | at a ton of old screenshots, wikipedia sites and archive.org | pages! That's how I designed most of it! I'm currently looking | into all of the legal stuff which comes with music sharing, but | a dedicated music feature is definitely planned! The iTunes API | is just a temporary thing to fill it with some content! | 5986043handy wrote: | What tech stack did you end up using for the backend? | AndrewLaneX wrote: | https://twitter.com/AnTheMaker/status/1332224148551118848?s | =... | D_B_Koopa wrote: | for it to be legitimate you need to use ColdFusion and then | do a half assed port to .net. | 83457 wrote: | I was at a CF conference with MySpace as a speaker and | they talked about how often they went down but that they | were switching to another CF engine with .net | capabilities (BlueDragon). Their discussions and jokes | about instability and going down due to bad code updates | were really cringy and gave the impression that their | platform was a mess. | rmason wrote: | Pretty certain we were at the same conference. There | development practices horrified the group I was with in | the audience. At a time that a new competitor appeared | (Facebook) they made the fatal mistake of rewriting their | software in dot Net. No new features for a year or more. | Joel Spolsky wrote a pretty famous essay about the wisdom | of doing that. | | https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you- | should-... | adrr wrote: | Performance was the feature. Friendster should have been | social network of that era but they couldn't scale and | had to shutdown new user registration. Same thing | happened to Twitter but they had no competitor in short | form social networking. | lowcodetv wrote: | Pownce? | | "Twitter on steroids" [0] | | [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pownce | conjectures wrote: | Thanks for this one, it encapsulates a feeling I've had | for a while but could never verablize so well. | jeremycarter wrote: | I live by that blog post. | jjeaff wrote: | I had an older friend that worked at CF when I was a | teenager. He taught me a bit about relational databases | and some other important stuff as he was one of the only | developers I knew growing up. | | I remember him telling me how I was wasting my time | building in php/MySQL since CF was the future and serious | companies wouldn't be looking for php developers. Glad I | never pulled the trigger and bought their expensive IDE. | 83457 wrote: | No expensive IDE was necessary and there are open source | servers now. Regardless, you made the right choice. | bigiain wrote: | For proper early 2000s nostalgia, I reckon the backend | should actually be Apache mod_perl, with the ".cfm" | extension script aliased to Perl CGI scripts because | management tell everybody "it's running on Adobe!"... | zingermc wrote: | <cfdump var="bad_memories"/> | rangoon626 wrote: | Do a soundcloud integration like poolside fm did | codeulike wrote: | Yes this is a good point - people with music to share will | probably have it on Soundcloud or Bandcamp already, just | add Soundcloud/Bandcamp embedding and you're all set | peterburkimsher wrote: | How about the Dragon Hoard? Files are hosted on Archive.org, | and have been for a year and a half without being taken down. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19569865 | JMTQp8lwXL wrote: | The rebuild doesn't appear to be using React or Angular. Keeping | it true to 2007-style server-side rendering. | nobleach wrote: | You'd need to build it in ColdFusion cfm pages to really | capture that original flavor. They migrated to ASP.NET at some | point before everyone left. | est31 wrote: | SSR is also 2020 style. Most websites out there use it. | Aeolun wrote: | Isn't it great?! | cutitout wrote: | Playing around with it made me realize just _how_ much I miss | those good old derpy days, and how many great times I had on | myspace and then mostly forgot about. It made me a bit emotional | even. Thank you! | | I don't have that much time atm, but I can't _wait_ to get into | the CSS and whatnot <3 | criddell wrote: | What's the connection to tibush.com? | webwanderings wrote: | Someone's soon going to recreate the facebook! | | Is it just me or nobody realize that the likes of MySpace started | the downfall of the original Internet before it became "social | media"? | | Nostalgia of a simple web page is fine (and this is a nice | implementation no doubt), but why recreate something that leads | to something that is predictable? | | Instead, recreate usenet with better privacy and mobile adoption. | Usenet is what they killed before the promise of the Internet | could be realized. | [deleted] | onion2k wrote: | Cool. If anyone wants to connect - | https://spacehey.com/profile?id=316 | arthurcolle wrote: | JK Rowling really joined this? Lol | ASpaceCowboi wrote: | NARUTO is back!!! | | Gotta bring back the chibi art styles | comprev wrote: | NextDNS is complaining about the domain and blocks it. Anyone | else had this issue? | joshmanders wrote: | Nope, I'm on NextDNS and haven't had issues since he first | announced it. | GoatHerders2 wrote: | It's a shame about the name. | | It might have succeeded! | typh00n wrote: | despite the opinion of some others here i _loved_ the old 2008 | facebook. it's so sad how it all turned out 12 years later. | nv-vn wrote: | I think the 2008ish version of the internet was just a much | happier place. Part of why HN feels like a breath of fresh air | still | michaelmrose wrote: | I like this better than facebook. | IgorPartola wrote: | Could you make the login form's email field have type="email"? | Helps on mobile. | partyguy wrote: | Good idea! I changed it! | Toxygene wrote: | I'm not sure if/when it changed on the site, but MySpace listed | the time comments were made in the comment posters local timezone | instead of the readers timezone. It was such a strange thing that | I still remember it decades later. | [deleted] | pell wrote: | When I saw the title, I assumed I would just like it for the heck | of taking a look into the past. But in reality the nostalgia hit | very effectively, I really started remembering very good and | interesting times on that website I had when i was a teen. You've | done a really good job of capturing its magic. | rado wrote: | Wait, where's Tom? Seriously though, with a little visual touch | up this could become good. | nv-vn wrote: | Someone needs to do the same for YouTube ca. 2007 | barnabee wrote: | Neat! | | I'd sign up if there was an option to throw a few bucks your way | and have absolutely guaranteed zero tracking, ads, or sharing/use | of my data for anything other than what's strictly necessary to | run the site itself. | rocky1138 wrote: | I wouldn't mind ads if they were static or, at worst, .gif. No | tracking, no javascript, just a simple banner. | meekmockmook wrote: | Id pay 5 to 10 a month for no ads at all. | meekmockmook wrote: | As someone with extremely deep contempt for Silicon Valley, Big | Tech monopolies, and modern social media culture, this brought a | tear to my eye.It was so easy to make new friends online once | upon a time. | | The fascist uniformity of modern social platforms has left a | generation creatively stifled and alienated from each other. I | miss the ugly comet cursors, the crummy MIDI tunes, the bad HTML, | the encouragement to make new friends, and the ability to reach | people without paying thousands in garbage ads. | | I miss dating online without bribing some shitty algorithm. It | used to be that I could click "browse," find a cute girl's | profile, say hi, and set up a date within a few days. Modern | social media is cold and hostile. Stay in your friend group. | Avoid strangers: They're all scary and bad. Don't trust anyone | (except for us, the tech company. Give us all your data for | free.) | | The internet used to be bohemian, weird, creative, tacky, and | friendly. It was my favorite place to be. Where did that joy go? | What have we become in the last 8 years? | Aldipower wrote: | These words are so true. I feel the same way. Nothing to add. | artursapek wrote: | Will this actually stay online? I will unironically use this. | partyguy wrote: | Yes, I'm planning to keep this online! I'll add more features | in the coming weeks! | cjdell wrote: | Dude this is actually awesome. Do you have a "buy me a beer" | link so we can help out with hosting costs? | | Seriously you should make this the "Wikipedia" of social | media. No ads ever and people will use it. | | By the way, just watched The Social Dilemma on Netflix. The | world needs people like you! | mhd wrote: | A convenient way to funnel people to my Black Cauldron geocities | fan page. | throwdour wrote: | Many creative people got their first public attention on MySpace. | Soundcloud never quite matched it. Facebook and Twitter are rat | races. | | A re-run of MySpace, at scale, would be a benefit to the world. I | hope this takes off like a rocket (without losing its spirit.) | cl0ne wrote: | Nice work, I made a lot of good friends through the music section | of the old MySpace and have been working on something similar. | Facebook, Bandcamp, Soundcloud just aren't the same. | huntermeyer wrote: | > Error! You can only send one friend-request every two minutes. | Please wait a minute and try again. | | This is going to slow down adoption. | bsanr2 wrote: | I want to join, but this carries over a lot of the same problems | that modern social media has developed - primarily, insight into | a heavy portion of my personal data and connections, without any | assurance that it won't be monetized in an untoward fashion. It | sucks, but it feels like Facebook et al.'s abuse of their | position has ruined this kind of centralized social media | platform forever. Promises aren't enough; it has to be built into | the platform structure. So I'm wary. | | Sidenote: boy, do pages load fast, though. No cruft, I love it. | hans1729 wrote: | Hi! I registered and tried to message you, but that feature is | still being implemented :-) | | Curious to see the progression from here on, great job! | xwdv wrote: | How is this not copyright infringement? | monk33 wrote: | It is | huntermeyer wrote: | IANAL but maybe the parody exception would protect them. | | Kinda like, Nathan Fielder's "Dumb Starbucks". | | Also, is website design even copyrightable? | crousto wrote: | This is nice! And reminds me of this other very cool MySpace | rebuild by artist/hacker Jankenpopp: | | https://myspace.windows93.net/ | T3RMINATED wrote: | Nice!! is this open source | ffpip wrote: | So this was what MySpace looked like. I've never seen it before. | Thanks :) | logicalmonster wrote: | Good idea. I think there's a lot of room for some kind of | internet social network that gives you a space for a custom | profile, chatting with friends about anything, no algorithms | dictating what you see, no heavy handed moderation, etc. wish you | success | duxup wrote: | That's what always keeps me away from regular social networks. | | It's not my page, it's not my profile, it's just like everyone | else's.... | pferde wrote: | We have more than enough of places like that, there's no need | to create (n+1)th. They all have the same problem - lack of | adoption, so the network effect is working against them. | [deleted] | doublepg23 wrote: | The Fediverse is creating a space like this. The best case is | you hosting your own server and being in control of all | moderation. | bassrattle wrote: | I agree. Today, that's a2b2.org. it used to be makeoutclub.com | jldl805 wrote: | I live and breathe on the internet and have never been | moderated once, even freely expressing myself, insulting people | who deserve it, etc. | | My point here is that if you think the current social media | options have "heavy handed" moderation, you're probably the | problem, not them. | rriepe wrote: | Can anyone understand this sheep's baas? | sillysaurusx wrote: | Your assumption is that the moderator is fair. This is often | not the case. | javajosh wrote: | I was recently moderated for the first time in my (fairly | long) life by a social media site. I complained, and they | restored it, but it was jarring. My general impression is | that times they are a'changin' WRT moderation on the | interwebs. | skinkestek wrote: | Try to point out something correct but moderately | controversial. | | I think I've been modded for: | | - trying to get people to hate less on Russians | | - on the other hand, in the same forum: trying to tell some | over eager people that no, Russians aren't saints and it | isn't _all_ NATOs fault. | | - pointing out (as an insider that was supposedly one of the | victims in a major news story recently) that the "facts" | didn't check out at all. | logicalmonster wrote: | Maybe you don't have any out of the box ideas that goes | against the ideals of corporate America, but I'm certainly | glad that other people do. | | Imagine if current Twitter was around in Galileo's time. | | * Independent Fact Checkers have confirmed the consensus that | the Earth is the center of the Universe, just as God willed | it. | | Or what if George Washington was relying on social media | during the formation of our country? | | * Independent Fact Checkers have confirmed that paying taxes | to Britain is good and beneficial to the Colonies. | | Many good ideas shatter the existing "consensus" | dramatically. I'm glad that boundaries can and do get pushed | because that's how we come up with better ideas and systems. | 762236 wrote: | You're probably being downvoted for your comment. Does that | make you the problem? | idclip wrote: | Not an SJW here, actually a political minority here ... i see | a moderate amount of moderation and banning pf groups where i | hang. Sure its not china but we are not using that asa | standard .. | | and mate thats a ton of shaming in your tone .. please | consider showing some compassion. I fail to see how his | comment provoked yours .. | lovegoblin wrote: | > SJW | | Hah people still use this term unironically? | kortilla wrote: | That just means your views are not very controversial (most | people's aren't). | | The argument you're making is just a different face of the "I | have nothing to hide" in the privacy debates. | labster wrote: | I have controversial views (the EM Drive works! Sport is | the opiate of the masses!) but I seem to get along just | fine on social media. It's really only the people who have | boring, discredited political views who have problems. | rriepe wrote: | So if I tell my EM drive to leave and come back in six | months, that's a relativistic bomb, right? | bmarquez wrote: | "EM Drive works" is not a controversial view because most | people have no idea what you're talking about (I had to | Google it myself). | alacombe wrote: | > I have controversial views | | This is nowhere controversial. | | Try to be a constitutional originalist in the Sillicon | Valley / tech sites, and we'll continue this | conversation... | nindalf wrote: | > originalist | | You mean the folks who think a black person is worth | 3/5th of a white person? Yeah I imagine they have it | rough. | [deleted] | alacombe wrote: | You're forgetting a aspect: the Constitutional clause has | been superseded by the 14th Amendment. So in this case, | an originalist would rule based on the Amendment, not the | just Constitution's original text. | | And this display a crucial point, there is a legal | process to amend the Constitution not relying on a few | scholars re-re-re-interpretation. I'm all for a | Constitutional Amendment on abortion, as long as it's the | Will of the People, not the Will of a few jurists. If you | can get a Constitutional Amendment for the prohibition of | intoxicating beverages, you can certainly get a | Constitutional Amendment behind abortion... unless it's | less of a consensus as you make it seems. Also, using | one's 14th Amendment Right to privacy to "legalize" | abortion is a pretty weak argument. | aerovistae wrote: | The point is that originalism relies on the idea that the | Constitution was a nearly flawless document worth | preserving in its original form with a couple | adjustments, where in reality it was a deeply, deeply | flawed document that has been patched repeatedly to a | workable state but still has serious shortcomings. | mnouquet wrote: | That is blatantly false, originalism is relying on both | the Constitution + associated Constitutional Amendments. | As OP mentioned, the latter are not set in stone. | [deleted] | aerovistae wrote: | I'm already upset. | setgree wrote: | Sidenote: I was in a band in High School that uploaded all its | music to MySpace in 2006, and our only backups were a few CDs we | had made; so when MySpace lost all that [0], it was my first, | most painful lesson about backing up important things multiple | times. | | [0] https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/myspace- | lost-m... | franciscop wrote: | I had recently lost some important data back then so luckily I | was already backing up data by then! Though now I have kind of | the opposite problem, I have too much data and it's difficult | to navigate through it all :) | CharlesW wrote: | Have you tried Internet Archive? You might be one of the lucky | ones. | | https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/4/18295014/myspace-lost-song... | setgree wrote: | Alas, I have tried, we were not among the lucky. | clw8 wrote: | Same with me and my Geocities page from 1997 :( | UShouldBWorking wrote: | Nobody lost anything from myspace that they actively didn't | want. For over a year they announced the change was coming and | to download and back up you stuff. Even now a lot is still | backup on archive. Why are people so desperate to play the | victim all the time? | polynomial wrote: | MySpace had all the pieces in place to own the music download | space, and somehow let iTunes eat their lunch. | | I don't know how that happened, but I suspect the new owner was | pulling profit out of it to support their other flailing | divisions, rather than let them reinvest to finish their music | platform. | | They literally had all the pieces on the platform side, and it | was without question the platform of choice for pretty much every | independent musical artist. | | Anyone have the inside story? | Dangbleed wrote: | I bet you will get a job too. The same way that Hollywood is | simply making remakes and people are accepting this as new. | | A Nuclear bomb would be nice right about now. Covid was not | enough humble pie | bovermyer wrote: | Jesus dude, who crapped in your Cheerios this morning? | pcdoodle wrote: | haha, wish I could see the comment you're responding to. | hans1729 wrote: | > I bet you will get a job too. The same way that Hollywood | is simply making remakes and people are accepting this as | new. A Nuclear bomb would be nice right about now. Covid | was not enough humble pie | pcdoodle wrote: | Bwahahaha! Thanks xD | purplecats wrote: | how did you grab that | throwamon wrote: | enable showdead in your profile | throwamon wrote: | enable showdead in your profile | UShouldBWorking wrote: | Yikes, angry much? | ecommerceguy wrote: | I just got an error message about too many people trying to | create accounts. Keep it going! I'll buy ad space if you never | sell to big media. | pcdoodle wrote: | Same here! We're rooting for you! | Aeolun wrote: | Hard to not take those millions/billions. Here's to hoping | principles weigh more than money. | 2Gkashmiri wrote: | How about using that funkwhale with this ? That would be cool. | Right? | joshmanders wrote: | I've been beta testing SpaceHey since I saw An was letting some | people in and I must say the nostalgia is strong. Love this site | so much! | partyguy wrote: | Thank you for helping me test it!! :D | fortran77 wrote: | Is it still vulnerable to the Samy Kamkar worm? | Minor49er wrote: | Groups are still in progress. Those were the best part. | LockAndLol wrote: | Retro is somehow always in. Things always seem to come back in | some shape or form. | Aeolun wrote: | Oh, cool. I was wondering when a better replacement for Facebook | would show up. | ehutch79 wrote: | Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they | could, they didn't stop to think if they should. | furyofantares wrote: | Maybe weird feedback but the COVID-19 Pandemic section on the | front page really kills both the retro vibe and the idea that | this might be something unique rather than yet another way for me | to consume standard news. | meekmockmook wrote: | I'm with you. Lose the covid. Can find it anywhere else. | pcdoodle wrote: | I agree, I went to myspace to get away from the hive mind and | work in my space. | dvtrn wrote: | I had-interestingly-the exact opposite response. It kept the | waves of nostalgia in check by delivering a mild dose of | modernity to the experience that was subtle enough and works so | well with the rest of the presentation that I actually caught | myself smiling and nodding at it. | furyofantares wrote: | I think maybe I'd have had the same type of reaction to you | with a lighter modern news piece. The pandemic or politics | are both right out, but a clearly-new entertainment piece | would maybe elicit the same response from me that you've | described here. | makeworld wrote: | I never used MySpace, but this looks cool! Good idea to build off | the nostalgia. Just on first glance, I noticed you're using URLs | like https://spacehey.com/profile?id=123 for accessing profiles. | That seems like a bad idea, using increasing numbers for pages in | general is not great, because it makes it easy to scrape for | every user on the site. Why not switch to something like a UUID | or random base64 code? | wmij wrote: | The original myspace used the profile name for URLs - | https://myspace.com/some_name - maybe the reboot will | eventually. I tried with mine and it was a 404. | joshmanders wrote: | SpaceHey does too, but if you don't set one you get | profile?id=$int | wmij wrote: | Ok, thanks. I set what I thought was a username during | signup but looks like that was just the name. I see now | there's a second step going to | https://spacehey.com/settings and the username URL is | working for me. | CharlesW wrote: | Just curious: Why is this post with kind words and a seemingly- | helpful tip being downvoted? Is this bad advice for some | reason? | meowster wrote: | Maybe it's because it's advocating for security by obscurity? | It would probably be more resource-intensive for the server | if a bot were to scrape every single page to collect UUIDs | instead of methodically going through them. | CharlesW wrote: | Oh, that's interesting -- I hadn't considered that creators | of web apps might choose to do this to make scraping | easier. Generally, I've understood that exposing internal | IDs is undesirable. | | [1] https://blog.jiayu.co/2018/09/methods-for-obfuscating- | sequen... [2] | https://stackoverflow.com/questions/396164/exposing- | database... | Minor49er wrote: | One way to avoid this is to look for something requesting | only profile pages, then cut them off after a certain | number of requests. | pjc50 wrote: | All sorts of incidents have happened this way. Somebody | even got arrested for pointing it out on some government | website, once. | bazeblackwood wrote: | You should definitely tell us how to donate to this effort. Bring | back the old web! | pickpuck wrote: | Nice you can add a <style> tag to your profile! | | Please consider making the default colors/fonts CSS variables in | the :root so that they can be easily overridden for profile page | styling. | pcdoodle wrote: | Thank you so much for making this. I hated how sterile Facebook | was when it finally took over. | | Are these pages going to index in google? I used to find lots of | "friends" by searching site:myspace.com female statename | interestname | meekmockmook wrote: | I did this too. God, dating online used to be so much fun! | tylerchilds wrote: | Super cool! Are you considering federation a la ActivityPub et | al? | | Just thinking of a way for you to really stunt with what MySpace | could have been that Facebook or Twitter would never do. | zdkl wrote: | And even if federation is too big of a feature, maybe using the | ActivityStreams format for user interactions could be | beneficial. | | https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-core/ | superkuh wrote: | And if activitystreams are still too bloated you can look | into microformats2 and webmentions (indieweb). | varbhat wrote: | Website looks very very good and loads very fast imo. Just usable | without fancy bells. I like this design. | partyguy wrote: | Thank you :) | mrzool wrote: | I'm absolutely blown away by the speed of this website. Facebook | and Twitter are a bloated heavy mess in comparison. | | I just registered for an account and I'm getting super nostalgic. | Really well done! | | Edit: here's my profile in case someone wants to add me :) | | https://spacehey.com/mrzool | partyguy wrote: | thank you :) | dt3ft wrote: | Aaand here is why we can't have nice things: | | > Someone is currently trying to register hundreds of accounts | with fake email addresses per second. I'm trying to prevent that | so in the meantime you can't sign up on http://SpaceHey.com - | sorry. | meowster wrote: | Darn, I'm user number 300-something, and my real first name is | already taken as someone else's username. | [deleted] | simplecto wrote: | I sense a renaissance coming | eezurr wrote: | I really hope this takes off! A human curated/self exploring site | is a dream. I miss the myspace days when you could search by | location, genre, and sort the data in various ways. I discovered | so much music on my own, it was always an exciting adventure. | alberth wrote: | Tom | | Don't forgot to have Tom be your default first friend. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Anderson | NetBeck wrote: | "but most of all, samy is my hero"[1] | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samy_(computer_worm) | xyst wrote: | tom's looking a bit rough around the edges nowadays | meowster wrote: | It's tough work to spend half a billion dollars. | mooreed wrote: | This was my first thought too. | joshmanders wrote: | An (partyguy) and spacehey's official account are your friends | when you join, just like Tom was. | sitzkrieg wrote: | no whiteboard tho :( | mrits wrote: | If you built a web app in ASP.NET 1.x it would actually look a | lot like this without much modification. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2020-11-29 23:00 UTC)