1 year of building SpaceHey

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Exactly one year ago today, I launched @SpaceHey on Product Hunt, Hacker News and Reddit. I created the initial version in about 3 weeks as a fun side-project. Now, one year later, it's at around 400 000 users - which is unbelievable - and my life has changed A LOT since then! 🧵

So much happened this past year since I launched SpaceHey and yet it feels like it was yesterday! Let's reflect on the launch of SpaceHey and the key events since then 👇

At around 9:30 in the morning on Nov 29, 2020, I posted SpaceHey on @ProductHunt At first, it didn't get featured on the homepage and I was afraid no one would notice it. A short while later, my fear turned to excitement as it got featured on the homepage! twitter.com/AnTheMaker/status/1332963728527077379

I remember tweeting about the launch and then going outside to put up the christmas lights. After about an hour, I got back inside, checked my phone and my Twitter notifications blew up! @rrhoover even joined SpaceHey and tweeted about it! 🤯 twitter.com/rrhoover/status/1333078264676401154

Later that day, @m1guelpf DM'd me and suggested to post it on @HackerNews too. I posted it with his help, and it quickly got to top #1 on the homepage 🤯 I think Miguels great title suggestion played a big part here news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25245740

At 9PM on that day, SpaceHey had 1000 registered users, was #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt, and still pretty high up on the Hacker News homepage. At this point, it was all still running on a simple 10€ server. twitter.com/AnTheMaker/status/1333134918709284868

The next day (Nov 30), @alexisohanian (yes, THE Alexis Ohanian) even tweeted about SpaceHey!! 🤯 twitter.com/alexisohanian/status/1333216849320955905

Later that day, I got a DM from @OneJaredNewman asking me for an interview for an article for Fast Company 😲 I had a great conversation with him via DMs and answered all his questions about SpaceHey. It was my first interview ever!! (If you are reading this, Jared: THANK YOU!!)

The next day (Dec 1), @FastCompany published the article and my phone blew up once more! A full article, just about SpaceHey, in such a huge publication!! Incredible 🤯 twitter.com/AnTheMaker/status/1358786835779092481

At this point, SpaceHey basically grew on its own. I launched the initial sparks by posting it on Product Hunt and Hacker News and now (thanks to the Fast Company article) it's spreading on other places like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and TikTok like a wildfire.

Meanwhile, I was busy fixing bugs, adding new features (Blogs, Bulletins, Comments, a Notification Center & more), moderating the community (banning spammers), replying to tweets, emails, DMs on all platforms AND trying to manage and scale the server!

@FastCompany Oops, wrong embedded tweet! Sorry! Here's the correct one: twitter.com/AnTheMaker/status/1333798254924840961

As the costs grew with better servers, I needed a way to monetize SpaceHey I decided to order a few hundred SpaceHey stickers from a German manufacturer & sell them to make some money to pay for the servers. This is still my main monetization method today! spacehey.com/shop

One month later, at the end of 2020, SpaceHey had 10 000 users. Then the speed increased. On Jan 5, there where 20 000 users. On Jan 6, there where 30 000 users. On Jan 11, 40 000 😲 twitter.com/AnTheMaker/status/1346414314824081408

Then, at the beginning of February 2021, @laurahday reached out to me for an interview on SpaceHey and published an amazing article on @Vice a few days later 🤯 twitter.com/AnTheMaker/status/1358786835779092481

SpaceHey was growing really fast, but the Vice article turned this up to a whole new level! 3 days after the article was published, I reached 70k registered users and my server was burning!! twitter.com/AnTheMaker/status/1359989641793990663

On February 26, something truly amazing happened: The amazing @willreynoldsjc wanted to interview me for BBC Radio! I had a great phone interview with him and on the same day SpaceHey reached the 100k users mark! 🤯 The interview aired a few days later. twitter.com/AnTheMaker/status/1365400183006183425

After that, it became a bit calmer. The amount of daily new users decelerated a bit and became steady. I developed a bit of a daily routine: checking SpaceHey & Twitter, fixing bugs and working on new features like the long-awaited "Groups" feature. twitter.com/AnTheMaker/status/1401214518206910465

Then, this summer, I got a message from the lovely folks at @tincon, a German conference for Teens! They wanted me to speak about SpaceHey in September in Hamburg! Of course I said yes! Thank you @spreeblick and everyone else for the amazing opportunity!

At this point, SpaceHey was at around 150k registered users. Then, two weeks ago, on Nov 12, things went REALLY crazy! Over night, SpaceHey went viral on TikTok, Twitter AND Instagram 🤯 It even was No. 1 in the US Twitter Trends for a few hours! twitter.com/thesephist/status/1458960858550308871

In just 48 hours, SpaceHey went from around 180k users to over 300k users 😲 It felt like EVERYONE was talking about SpaceHey! My servers crashed multiple times in those days, and I went from a cluster of 5 small Servers to now 14 HUGE Servers! twitter.com/LinusTech/status/1459264742506176512

I got way too little sleep, but the past weeks were incredible! Bloomberg wrote about SpaceHey, @DaneCook signed up and so much more happened!! So much stuff happened that it definitely needs its own thread (soon?) 😅 bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-12/retro-myspace-clone-spacehey-blows-up-with-200-000-signups

Anyways, now SpaceHey is at around 400k registered users, the traffic is incredible and most importantly: people seem to enjoy SpaceHey. I am really happy to say that my most important values and goals I always had, are still true: building a friendly and safe space for everyone.

I am immensely grateful for all your love and support over this past year, your enthusiasm for SpaceHey and all the kind and motivating words. I would not be at this point in my life without you: you helped me turn a fun project into a platform with 400k people on it!

One year ago, I would have never expected any of this. It has been such an incredible journey so far and I can't wait to see where it's going next! From the bottom of my heart, thank you to each and every one of you! I am so thankful and appreciate every single one of you! ❤ ~An