"Nobody wants to dance in an empty nightclub." That's what a friend said when I told him we were building a new social media app in 2026. And well, he has a point: Big Tech's network effects are enormous. Still, today we're launching the Blybahn beta!
The name comes from my little daughter. The Dutch word for slide is "glijbaan", but she always used to ask if we could go to the "blijbaan" in our neighbourhood. Blij means happy, bahn means path: Blybahn is the route to a happier digital life. You'll find that slide in our logo: cheerful, winding lines that together form a slide. Calm, friendly and colourful, exactly how social media should feel. 🛝
Why are we doing this? I'm a father of four teenagers myself, and my co-founders Menno and Bas have teenagers at home too. As a tech company and as parents, we worry about the online world our children are growing up in. Everyone knows by now that social media is deliberately addictive. Less visible: foreign algorithms increasingly decide what we see, read and believe. Regulation helps, but it will be a long game of cat and mouse between the EU and Big Tech. Banning isn't sustainable, because the need to share and to belong is simply human. So we need European alternatives.
That's why we're building Blybahn: social media that is truly social again. Built on our own values: privacy, safety and real connection. For adults, good old-fashioned connection; for young people, a kind of digital swimming lesson. Not holy, but safe. Built in Leiden by the Zooma team, which has been creating digital platforms for fifteen years, for the EU, universities, student associations and music festivals, among others.
But how, with that empty nightclub? Simple: we don't want to become a noisy club like X or Insta. We're building thousands of intimate house parties, where twenty friends already make for a great night. (Metcalfe's law versus Reed's law :-))
We have a long way to go and we'll make mistakes. Will it work? Who knows. But the tide is turning, and if ASML, Spotify and Revolut can do it in their sectors, why not a European social platform that does things differently? No rush: we paddle, we learn. And when the wave comes, we'll catch it 🏄
The foundation is there. Let's go!
Timothy
co-founder
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/
Android: https://play.google.com/