Back in the Commodore 64 days, I ran a BBS, and I spent countless hours on Quantum Link. Long before social media became what it is today, those places showed me what an online community could be. Nobody was chasing engagement or performing for an algorithm. There was no endless feed deciding what you should see next. You joined because you wanted to be part of something.
That experience stayed with me for forty years. For most of them it was just a feeling — a thing I missed. Eventually I decided to stop missing it and build it instead.
So I built PeopleConnections.
Not a retro throwback — a modern place with some old ideas: no ads, no algorithmic feed, no tracking, no data selling. It's built and run by one person, which means there are no investors to please and no growth targets to hit. There's nothing here to sell you, and nothing to sell about you.
The heart of it is the profile canvas: every member gets a blank space to design and animate however they want. A beach at sunset. A haunted house. A tiny replica of your actual desk. Drag anything anywhere, add motion, build a whole scene — whatever "you" looks like. Instead of a million identical profiles, each one becomes an extension of its owner.
About the bear. His name is Tiny Teddy, and he's the platform's living mascot. He might wander across your canvas exactly once, say something kind, and never return. Nobody controls when he visits — not even me. If he's visited you, you'll know.
I'm not trying to recreate the internet of the '80s and '90s. Those days are gone, and that's okay. But some of what made those early communities special is still worth carrying forward: conversations over engagement, people over algorithms, creativity over conformity.
The platform is free today, and I'll do everything I can to keep it that way. If you'd like to help keep the lights on, there's a support page — but the only thing it really needs is people who want to be here.