Launching today
Mirlo
Social media for real connections. No likes, no algorithm.
93 followers
Social media for real connections. No likes, no algorithm.
93 followers
Mirlo is a European social app for real human connection. Built without engagement hooks: no likes, no public comments, no algorithm, no infinite scroll. Mutual connections only, so the conversation stays between the people in it. Hosted in the EU, no ads, no data sold. Subscription-only, 14-day trial. On iOS across 30 EU countries with wider rollout planned. Made for the people who quietly closed the apps that stopped working for them.
@mathijslemmers Congrats on the launch! Very cool concept - social media in its purity. Curious that you mentioned the "nudity" aspect on the website - could Mirlo be a competitor for OnlyFans?! If that's the plan, smart. If it's not, how would you monitor that?
@anna_ludwinowski Haha, thank you so much for your reply. You mention what was one of the most interesting points of discussion for me whilst developing this app. Let me start off by explaining how it works right now:
Mirlo allows non-sexualised nudity. This is a direct response to movements like "Free the nipple". Our belief is that there isn't anything wrong with nudity, as long as it isn't sexualised. That isn't to say that there is something wrong with sexualised nudity, but we found this to be a great place to start.
When uploading nudity we do ask people to flag this, this way we can filter it out for people that don't want any form of nudity in their feed.
So to answer your question: no, we're not trying or wanting to be a competitor to Onlyfans. We're trying to be as inclusive as possible and have been listening to people's frustrations with other social platforms.
Always happy to discuss this further, again, thanks for reaching out!
@mathijslemmers I'm with you on the nudity and having a filter option for those who don't want it is a smart idea. I like that there aren't any ads, so does that make subscriptions the only revenue model?
@anna_ludwinowski Correct! We realise that nowadays people need a subscription for basically anything and honestly, it's not great. So choosing that as the business model was an important decision, a big hurdle for people to take. Ultimately the thinking was:
there is want/need for a social app that helps people actually connect;
making and maintaining that costs money;
ads, data selling and stakeholders turn the users into the product;
a subscription is the most consistent way to fix this issue.
We've done a lot of calculations to make sure the pricing is fair and we're not confronting users with a price bump in a few months or even years. That obviously needs a big asterix for any unforeseen developments, but our goal is to be open and transparent as much as we can.
こんにちは。リリースおめでとうございます。
わたしも少しだけ近い思想でSNSを構築しているので興味が湧きました。
実際にどのように他の人と繋がるのですか？すでに知っている知人同士のコミュニティとなるのでしょうか？
インスタグラムのDM機能だけを切り取ったようなアプリなのでしょうか。
お時間があれば教えていただけると嬉しいです。ありがとうございます。
@orora Thank you for commenting! I hope you don't mind me responding in English.
For the MVP, connecting with people is simply searching either their name or username, clicking on their profile and sending a connection request. The other user then has the choice to accept or decline the invite.
Once an invite has been accepted you both get access to each other's posts and the option to chat to each other.
There currently is no feature to promote connection more. But we are thinking about:
Sync your contacts;
Recommended friends based on your current connections.
In addition, each user has the option to hide their account from the search. Which means they alone can initiate connections.
Hope this helps, feel free to let me know should you have more questions😄
Genuinely refreshing to see a social app built around mutual connections and no public likes. Most attempts at "calm" social media still sneak in engagement mechanics. The European privacy angle + no data selling is a strong differentiator too.
How do you handle discovery on Mirlo — if there's no algorithm, how do new users find people they'd actually want to connect with?
@doganakbulut Thank you for your comment! At this moment the answer to that is quite simple: discovery isn't handled.
You can search for people by name and/or username, but that's about it. There are features on the roadmap to improve this, but we want to be careful rolling these out. It's scarily easy to fall back into pushing certain content onto people.
What's on the roadmap:
Sync your contacts;
Recommended friends based on your current connections.
We're very open to listen to any ideas or brainstorm about this. Let us know your thoughts😊
@doganakbulut @mathijslemmers I have some ideas regarding this:
1. New people can be found based on the location of the user.
2. Based on the content of the post which a user post, they can get recommendation for people who post similar content (Although, this can lead to social bubble problem which is currently present in all major social media platforms. But that's a problem only when it's done in excess)
I think this would still keep the soul of mirlo alive, happy to know what you think about these.
@jayant_rana Those are excellent suggestions, your help is very much appreciated😁
Ideas like these are exactly something I hope to encourage within Mirlo at some point as well. The idea is to at some point allow for people to request features and - probably using AI - filter and group them. This way we can very clearly see what type of features people are looking for the most.
I miss the early days of social apps when they were mostly about keeping up with people you actually knew. Curious to see how this evolves.
@varun1jan Same here😄 It's a sentiment I keep hearing over and over. I finally had enough about a year ago. Deleted my Instagram but quite soon felt like I was missing out on genuine updates from friends and family.
Really hoping we've got something here that can help people connect with their loved ones and not be glued to their phone 24/7.
Great initiative. A social media network that focuses on the ‘social’. I’ve installed the app and will try to get my friends use it!
I'm from India and I'm really excited to try this out one day. I was an early Instagram user back when it was just about sharing photos before everything got so toxic. I really miss that simplicity and I hope Mirlo can bring it back, good luck!
@rajanbuilds I'm so happy to hear that! We can't wait to role the app out to other countries. There seems to be a real want for people to go back to basics and just connect with their friends and family.
Thank you so much for sharing🫶