After Twitter’s rough year with Elon Musk generating so much bad press, Twitter users have sought out alternatives. One of the front runners is Hive Social, a microblogging site launched in 2019 which has frequently been compared to Twitter.
In November 2022 the platform benefitted from the rumour that Twitter serves were shutting down. Panic broke out amongst users, and Hive suddenly found itself the number one social app in Apple’s App Store.
But since then the platform has had issues, such as servers being unavailable. On December 1, the service was shut down for two weeks to fix “security issues that affect the stability of our application and the safety of our users.”
I became a passionate Twitter user about 10 years ago after becoming a One Direction fan and can’t imagine using a different app. So I decided to try Hive out for a week to see how it works.
What is Hive?
On the surface Hive is very similar to popular social media apps like Twitter and Facebook. Users have their own profile; a timeline; can network with each other; and can make posts that other user can see. However, there are a few little things that Hive does differently.
Unlike on Twitter, you can customise your personal profile. You can choose from more than 35 profile colours, and your choice will serve as your accent colour from then on. You can also leave your star sign and your favourite pronouns in your profile.
As on Twitter, people can follow you without you having to follow them back. You can also view a timeline of posts, although it doesn’t appear very clearly.
Hive founder Raluca Pop was fed up with the limitations she faced on social media platforms, meaning that her posts were not seen by many friends. And she felt pressured by complicated algorithms.
Her frustration led her to start Hive as a passion project in her bedroom and so she taught herself how to code. After three months of coding she finally launched Hive in October 2019; and three years later – with almost only no support and only self-funding – Hive hit 1.5 million users in November 2022 and continues to welcome thousands of new users each day.
Two different feeds
One distinctive thing about Hive is that it has two feeds with different purposes. One of them is the ‘Home Feed’. On there, your posts from your contacts are displayed in the app in chronological order. So there is no algorithm behind it that tries to keep you in the app for as long as possible. This feature is really handy since you cannot miss anything your friends post anymore, which I like.
The alternative to this offered by Twitter can be really messy, as a lot of posts do not appear in order. That annoys me since it means I am missing important posts from my friends on Twitter all the time. So Hive having a home feed only for people you follow is more than great.
You will quickly also notice one of the ways that the app makes money for itself. This is by featuring advertisements that look very similar to regular posts. The posts that you create yourself also appear in this feed. These can be text, images, GIFs, polls, or in a Q&A format.
The second way to see a feed is called the “Discover Feed”. This is sorted via different topics such as anime, gaming, sports, etc. As the name suggests, you will ‘discover’ posts from influencers and other users active around the topic.
When I signed up for Hive, I was asked to select the topics I was interested in. So I chose to focus on ‘music’, ‘fashion’, ‘books’, ‘travel’ etc. But when opened my timeline I was recommended all kind of content, but not quite the content I expected!
What I saw was pretty shocking, and for a moment I thought I might have signed up for the wrong app. Because what was waiting there for me was explicit content which was clearly for 18+! And yes I am talking about porn. The first thing which popped up was a penis!!!!! Not something I wanted to see, clearly.
After that I closed the app and left it closed for a couple of days. I was too scared to open it again! But eventually I decide to go on it again to see what else I could do on it. I still had the same issues regarding unwanted content. And after digging a bit I found out that I was not the only person having these issues.
Hive has an option to mark content as Not Safe For Work (NSFW) if, for example, it is not child friendly. For those unfamiliar with the term, NSFW refers to media that displays nudity and sexual material. However, users hijack tags such as ‘food’ or ‘music’ in order to promote their adult content, which means people like me end up seeing NSFW content even if they don’t want to. Hive needs to work on this urgently, since the risk of someone underage seeing explicit content is high.
My first impression of Hive
Hive Social presents itself as a fresh alternative to Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. However it barley has anything new to offer. For example, I can get a chronological feed on Twitter, and I can write posts on all other platforms and add media such as photos and videos. However, a chronological feed at Twitter does not always show everything in chronological order.
So there is no special feature that would make me switch to the platform. In addition, the community is still tiny compared to other networks, though that could be an attraction for those who prefer to hang out in a small group.
For me though, Hive has nothing to offer. I will stick to Twitter as long as I can. But for people who do not want to use it anymore because of Elon Musk, maybe give Facebook or Instagram another chance.
