- Noplace, a new social media app, tops the Apple App Store charts this week.
- Created by Tiffany “TZ” Zhong, the app offers a text-based feed for Gen Z users.
- Business Insider spoke to Zhong about creating a viral app and the fear of becoming a “fad.”
There’s a new app in town.
Noplace, the text-based feed that MySpace and Twitter had to Gen Z, dominated the Apple App Store charts this week.
The social media app is the brainchild of 27-year-old serial founder and investor Tiffany “TZ” Zhong, whose tech career began in her late teens.
Rather than burdening yourself with carefully curated posts, the app encourages users to share their stream-of-consciousness thoughts directly in the feed. People can also create a personalized profile with colored blocks to show what they listen to, watch, eat, do and feel.
The app lets you connect with other users based on your common interests — or “stars,” as the app calls them. After you add your new connections, you can pin your top 10 friends to your profile and use the friends-only feed.
According to the App Store description, it aims to return to the era of social media before “algorithms and ads” took over.
This isn’t Noplace’s first time in the spotlight, either. Earlier this year, the app amassed 500,000 people on its pre-launch waitlist after gaining buzz through viral TikToks.
As users tire of established social media giants like Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok, new social media platforms have entered the arena, vying for a chance to become the new “it” platform.
In 2020 it was the Clubhouse; in 2022 it was BeReal (which was recently sold for €500 million); and 2023 saw a deluge of apps from Lapse to ByteDance’s Lemon8, each having their moments in the sun.
“We’re all just competing for people’s attention, especially Gen Z’s attention and time,” Zhong told Business Insider.
How to create a viral app
While Noplace had almost half a million users on its waiting list just last month, the app has been in testing for much longer and even had a different name.
Zhong began testing the app, then called Nospace, in late 2023 with a smaller number of users who would have to wait and receive invitation codes to access the app.
“When we started doing waiting lists, it was really a way for people to save your username,” Zhong said. “I wanted people to feel excited and early.”
She and her small team of seven continued to test the app in a closed environment, which allowed them to iterate quickly, remove unnecessary features, navigate trust and safety, and “double down on things that work,” Zhong added.
Just as the app was gaining popularity, Zhong received a cease and desist letter from another company in April. Zhong declined to name the company, but speculation is open.
So, Nospace changed its name. It also took advantage of the drama and took to TikTok to hype the renaming process. Zhong said they received thousands of requests, while an app user suggested Noplace. The app’s users then voted to approve it.
“It was a really fun marketing moment for us and it felt very collaborative,” Zhong said. “The vibe is just like … ‘there’s no place like home, there’s no place like here.'”
Avoiding being a “fad” and learning from the trials and triumphs of Big Tech
As Zhong built and continues to build Noplace, many of the solutions came directly from user feedback.
“I spend a lot of time talking to them, understanding how they feel about certain features, how they feel about the product, what makes them spend more time in the app, what they get out of the app,” Zhong said.
It particularly monitors the behavior of Noplace’s “power users,” some of whom even spend between eight and 10 hours on the app, Zhong said.
Her goal from the beginning was to “create a place where people can express themselves” and find community. And at a time when social media platforms are prioritizing entertainment over social interactions, Noplace feels timely.
Zhong compared his app to established operators such as Twitter, TikTok and even Reddit: “A lot of it is not community-oriented and is more about just consuming content and media. Reddit, for example… it’s really good for information. I use it for information, not to connect with people.”
Reddit is an important source of inspiration for Zhong’s app as well, as one of Reddit’s founders, Alexis Ohanian, advised Zhong on her app and his firm 776 invested in her previous company, Islands XYZ.
“He’s seen how this company has changed over time, but it’s also very much in line with his experience at Reddit, and it’s been very helpful,” Zhong said. Like Reddit, aliases are very common and part of the Noplace experience.
As Zhong looks ahead, however, she worries about following in the footsteps of the social media giants when it comes to scaling the app and adding more features.
“I want to be very careful not to inflate the application too much,” she said. “It’s kind of a failure for a lot of social apps.”
Still, Noplace plans to expand its group chat features with artificial intelligence tools that can help improve conversations.
And staying relevant, Zhong knows, will be Noplace’s next test.
“The biggest risk is being a fad,” she said. “It’s hard, social apps are more of an art than a science. There really isn’t a clear playbook.”
