A new app called HyperTexting is making it as easy to surf the web as it is to scroll through a social media feed, like Facebook or X. The app, newly available for iOS, also aims to make updating your own personal website as simple as sending a text message.

This algorithm-free vision for the future of the web was built by Caleb Hailey, a 20-year tech veteran who still remembers the internet’s early promise, where everyone would own their own domain and publish content on their small slice of the wider web. That, of course, changed with the arrival of social media.

“Somewhere along the way, social media came, and it was easier to make a page and post to your page than it was a website,” Hailey explained in a recent interview. “And the rest is history.”

Image Credits:HyperTexting

Beyond centralizing access to the personal connections and conversations that take place online, the shift to social media also established norms in a consumer app’s user interface, including a scrollable feed, user profiles, and other elements, like buttons for following, liking, and commenting.