Ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter there has barely been a day when the company hasn’t been grabbing the headlines for both good reasons and bad. Unfortunately for fans of the micro-blogging website, some of those headlines have been about users flocking to alternative social media services such as Mastodon. Today, we have news of another Twitter alternative app that is seeing record numbers of users in the wake of events taking place at Twitter HQ. Step forward, Hive Social.
Late on Monday, Hive posted on its official Twitter account that it had registered its 1,000,000th user. Although Hive had been seeing users sign up prior to Musk taking over at Twitter, there does seem to have been an uptake in sign-ups in recent weeks. Interestingly, as has been seen with Mastodon, there is a direct correlation between negative Twitter headlines and spikes in users signing up to Hive.
Hive was founded in 2019 by Kassandra Pop (Raluca) and is more of a mix of different social networks rather than simply a clone of Twitter. There are aspects of Instagram and Twitter in there but also MySpace too.
One of the key differences between Hive and Twitter is that the upstart social network shows a chronological timeline as opposed to an algorithmically curated one. This will act as a salve against the addictive qualities often attached to other social networks as they constantly try to optimize what they are showing you in a bid to capture every last second of your attention possible. Also, Hive is not solely focused on a timeline with other topic-based communities covering a variety of interests such as Science, Tech, Cars, Music, Fashion, Pets, Crafts, Books, Travel, Gaming, Art, Food, and more.
Another interesting dynamic is that Hive does not monetize ads instead choosing to offer premium features such as securing slots to display some of your favorite songs on your profile for a small fee. Although this isn’t quite the same as the premium offerings we have seen from the likes of Snapchat and Telegram, it is an interesting way to monetize social media traffic that again, nullifies some of the more dangerous aspects related to collecting as much data as possible on users in order to sell it to advertisers.
As to whether Hive Social will be the app to kill Twitter, we will have to wait and see. In the meantime, however, why not check out our short guide to Mastodon to learn about another of the new social networks on the block.
