Oh, Hatena was always a social networking site iirc, it's just that it also hosted Flipnote Hatena. Like a side hustle

Your account is tied to your 3ds, and the account is made in the app. When I moved systems, I lost my account on Sudomemo (it's a fan-run server for flipnote hatena) because their login system works the same as the original.

oh man i know this!
essentially yeah, you needed a Hatena ID to use flipnote. You could actually have a Hatena ID and use the website and browse, comment, ect, but you wouldnt get the perks of becoming a citizen or posting and all. And you would hav a boring username - I can't remember how it was formatted, i think it literally just said ID: in front of it. You could use other Hatena services fine of course. I remember a lot of Flipnotters actually enjoyed using their blogging platform sometimes, including myself (my old page is still up today lol)

If you were under 13, you had to print out a contract-thing for your parents to sign and send through the mail. I think Neopets did something similar for their boards? But I remember BEGGING my parents and laying everything about Hatena out to them to get them to sign that thing because I didn't want to lie about my age lol. It worked in the end!

Yeah I remember the paper form thing for users under 13, got my dad to do it for me but the one thing I regret was that the account was signed under his email and not mine so I couldn’t actually log in to the desktop site :(