I Tried Seven39, the Social Network That's Only Open Three Hours a Day

The internet is always open. What if it were closed sometimes? That's the central question of Seven39, an experimental social network that's only open for three hours a day, starting at 7:39pm Eastern. I logged in to the service last night and found a small, mostly friendly collection of people excited to try something new.

We're a few decades into an experiment where everyone on Earth uses the same couple of social networks for everything. It's ... not perfect. That might be why more and more alternatives to Instagram, X, and Facebook keep popping up, all with some sort of hook. Some, like Mastodon and Bluesky, make decentralization their central promise.

Seven39's hook is about time: You've got three hours to use the site every day—and that's it. Given the central mission of every other social network—basically, to take up as much of your time as possible—this is radical. "No endless scrolling. No FOMO. Just three hours of fun every evening," the website promises.

Credit: Justin Pot

I logged in last night and was charmed by the early 2000s design. There's a box you can use to browse posts above a timeline with everything posted on the network. Right now you can easily keep up with that, but there's also a "Top Posts" section you can use if you only want to see the posts with the most likes. You can also follow users directly, ase on other social networks, and see only those posts in the "Following" section. There is no ability to boost or retweet—just likes and replies. Post are mostly text but you can also add images or 60-second videos.

All of these features add up to the internet equivalent of a small town. Conversations ranged in topics—there were a few meta-threads about the network itself (Europeans, it turns out, wish they didn't have to log in during the middle of the night to use the service). For the most part, though, people are talking about their lives, TV shows, and the like. I saw very little political content and nothing resembling influencer culture—just people casually chatting.

And, honestly, that's what the internet needs more of: people casually chatting. This service isn't going to replace Facebook or Twitter and it isn't trying to. It's better for it.

View the full article