I just signed up for Hyves again.
Not because I think it's going to be the next big thing. Honestly, I signed up because I'm a little nostalgic. But not the way most people mean it.
For me it's nostalgic as a founder.
I was on Hyves before Facebook was even a thing here. It's where I launched my first real business, a little t-shirt brand called FRDM. I still remember creating a group one night, going to bed, and waking up to find it had 500 people in it. And it just kept growing from there.
Back then, Hyves actually worked for building something. If you organised an event, people showed up. Real people, real turnout. If I messaged someone about a collaboration, they replied. That's how I ended up working with BNN's Spuiten en Slikken, whose hosts wore my shirts on Dutch TV. It was a place where you could reach people and they'd reach back.
Somewhere along the way, social media stopped feeling like that.
Here's the part I keep thinking about. Hyves may have lost to Facebook precisely because it wasn't as addictive. No endless scroll, no algorithm engineered to keep you hooked. At the time, that looked like a weakness. In 2026, the people bringing it back are treating it as the whole point. No addictive algorithms. No endless feed. Your data stays in Europe.
Maybe the thing that made it lose is the thing that makes it worth trying again.
I don't know if it'll work this time. But I'll be there, dancing banana and all, rooting for it.
Were you on Hyves back in the day? What did you build or start there? Tell me.
