About IAMA

A third place is somewhere that isn't home and isn't work. A bar, a record shop, a library — you end up talking to people because you were both already there. That's the idea here.

What you've read, watched and listened to says more about you than a bio written at two in the morning, and it says it without trying. Keep that somewhere and the right people recognize it.

IAMA is not a dating app. Nothing here is gamified, there is no paywall to find out who liked you, and no feature exists to keep you lonely enough to come back tomorrow.

The math on most of those apps is simple: they earn while you're still looking, so finding someone is the one outcome they can't afford to be good at. We don't make money from your attention, so we don't need to hold it. Stay because the place is worth staying in, or don't.

We sell usernames. That's the whole business. No ads, no data brokers, no profile of you built for someone else to target.

Six characters and up are free, and stay free. Shorter names are scarce, so they cost: five characters have a fixed price, and anything shorter goes to auction. Sell yours on the marketplace later and we take a cut of the sale.

It's an odd business model with one useful property — it only pays off if people actually want to be here. A name is worth something because the place is.

Most platforms are at their best the week you join and a little worse every year after. This one should work the other way round. The archive gets denser, the people you found are still there, and the name you claimed early is a receipt for how long you've been around.