11 x things we miss about Hyves

How I sometimes long intensely for the time of Hyves, the platform where we posted photos taken with a real camera and later with our Blackberry Bold. As a profile picture, you often cropped your own head in Paint from a group photo. The vanity of Instagram was still far from Hyves, as it was really about making contact, while Instagram now serves more as a business card. The era of lurking began when Hyves was launched.

1. Scratching
Scratching on Hyves was really the coziest ever. Sometimes you would quickly leave a scratch for your girlfriend during information science, even though you were just sitting next to her in the classroom. Or you did this right after coming home from a long school day, to let her know that your friendship was forever. A scratch served as an online note that you would normally leave on the table for someone. The nice thing about Hyves was that these scratches were public, so you could also just check what your lover was scratching and with whom. I really liked that transparency on Hyves.

2. Dancing bananas
Actually, I miss all the moving emoticons from Hyves, but the dancing bananas have stuck with me the most; didn't everyone get happy from that? The smiley with all those colored hearts was also a hit. When you received this smiley from someone, you knew it was serious. And do you remember the cheerleader? I could go on for a while.

3. Tapping
Nowadays we send each other taps to collect money or to pay off our debts, but in the time of Hyves, ‘sending each other a tap’ really meant something very different. It was a very short but very powerful declaration of love: […] gives a kiss to […] or […] asks ‘Will you marry me?’ to […] Sometimes such a tap was quite private, and that's why Hyves had the great option to send each other an anonymous tap. This was something so exciting, your heart would skip a beat when you received such a secret tap.

4. Amazing groups you could join
The groups we were members of on Facebook really pale in comparison to the communities we could join on Hyves. I still remember exactly the first group I joined: ‘the-i-get-a-spontaneous-tap-from-hyves’. No idea anymore what was posted here and why ‘tap’ was used instead of ‘head’, but if you were a member of this, you had it all figured out.

5. Customizing your profile
You could completely pimp your profile, including colored backgrounds, letters, and bars. In the early days of Hyves, my profile had to be as pink as possible, but later it became trendy to incorporate as much black as possible into your profile for a mysterious and especially mature look.

6. Consciously giving your password to your friends
You consciously dropped your Hyves password to your friends so they could ‘break into’ your page. You would feign surprise as you looked at the changes in your profile and messages that were sent from you. ‘Omg, how terrible this is!’, but actually, it was just cool that you were so nonchalant with your password.

7. Being a Goldmember
How often your profile and photos were viewed could be seen on your own page and on someone else's, but as a Goldmember, you could see exactly who had visited your profile. Additionally, you could upload more photos and gain access to even more smileys. You didn't just become a Goldmember for nothing, no no, you had to pay a few euros for that. I don't believe my friends and I ever purchased this feature because we thought it was a waste of our pocket money, but the idea that this option was within reach was more than enough.

8. Private messages
Sending each other an anonymous tap was already quite daring, but you could take it a step further with private messages. When you received such a private message from someone, you would receive an email via Hotmail beforehand: […] has sent you a private message on Hyves. My god, how exciting that was, because someone could just ask for your number through such a private message.

9. R+R = R+R back
This abbreviation stood for: ‘reaction + respect is a reaction + respect back’. Through Hyves, you could give respect to people's photos; nowadays we call this a like. With this abbreviation, you actually forced someone else to hype your photo, but of course, you did something in return. You scratch my back, I scratch yours, that's how it went on Hyves.

10. If you didn't have a profile picture, Hyves would choose one for you
This has of course never happened to me, but mainly with the boys in my class, this was often the case back then. They were too lazy to upload a photo or simply didn't have one, but Hyves had the perfect solution for that: the clown photo with that gigantic question mark next to it. Do you remember that? The clown in the image was actually Jan Paparazzi.

11. Blogs and polls
Blogs were homemade questionnaires that your friends on Hyves could fill out. ‘Have you ever kissed?’ ‘Have you ever smoked?’ ‘Have you ever grinded?’ All kinds of these poignant questions were answered back and forth; this is how you really got to know each other well. And don't forget the poll: this was a multiple-choice question you could ask your friends on Hyves if they were too busy to fill out your entire blog.