Social media isn’t that social anymore. Can the NoPlace app change it?
The GenZ's can now get a chance to relive the history of My Space, and an era without algorithms.
Courtesy: Sarah Sobier
“Social Media doesn’t feel social anymore, everything is just media. It feels very disconnected”, says the founder of the NoPlace app, Tiffany Zhong. It’s been termed as a retro-holy mix of MySapce, with a Gen Z spin on Twitter. With more than a 380K-person waitlist to download this app, it has been trending number one on the App Store, ranking even higher than WhatsApp and Temu. Tiffany Zhong makes no show of hiding the fact that this new app is a tribute to the ongoing Y2K trend, that many spheres such as fashion, TV shows, and music have been bandwagoning on. The app has been successful in raising $19 million from investors such as Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s Seven Seven Six fund.
NoPlace aims for the renaissance of organic social interaction through social media. The app allows users to personalize their profiles with colors, personal interests, and topical tags. It features two feeds, the first showing the friends, and the second displaying global users of the app. Zhong aims to build a community, as most of the apps nowadays provide highly personalized content, isolating one another. “We’re watching different content and [following] different interests than our friends, so the community is harder to find as a result,” she tells Tech Crunch. With the NoPlace app, the idea is to provide a platform where users can find people who share the same interests as them. Users’ profiles can feature tags, which the app calls “stars,” that display their interests and topics, like their horoscopes, hobbies, and fandoms, making them discoverable to others with shared interests.
The unique twist in the app is its oxymoronic nature – it appeals to Gen Z, and the call of appeal is that the app won’t make use of algorithms. “All these other apps these days, it’s just algorithmic. A lot of posts just get pushed down if you don’t get engagement,” explains Zhong to Bustle. Even the app’s description reads, “Remember how fun the internet was before all the algos and ads?” Instead of manipulating feeds, the app leverages AI for content curation and suggestions. It doesn’t alter what you see but rather uses AI to offer summaries of things you might have missed.
However, skepticism abounds. On Reddit, many users call it a marketing ploy. The company hasn’t explained how exactly they will avoid algorithms, and what that means for content discovery. Some users even trolled the app, pointing out the irony of using the term AI (algorithms are the building blocks of AI) to supposedly escape “algorithms”. Reviewers have gone as far as calling NoPlace app a hype, destined to fade like BeReal. Adding to the user confusion are the app’s vague community guidelines. For example, they prohibit “violence, gore, or other scary stuff” (does this include horror movies?), anything “NSFW” (so are sex workers not allowed on the site), and promotion of “drugs, alcohol, or other illicit things (what does this include).”
However, this highlights a broader trend: a growing resistance among users, particularly Gen Z, to the manipulative nature of algorithms, forcing us to look at the sub-sect of Gen Z’s ebbing away from algorithmic social media. However, this is still a much smaller population compared to the larger wave of Gen Zs using algorithmic apps like TikTok or Instagram almost as their Google Search.
Time can only tell – if we are to barrel towards algorithms or turn back the wheel to simpler times of binary apps like Vines and MySpace.
