Gamers Are Fleeing Twitter for Hive. Can It Handle the Swarm?

Both as a company and as a functioning service, it is hurtling towards the unknown. Users have fled to other platforms since Musk took control. People don't want to go back to Facebook. Hive Social is a three-year-old company run by excited, if not slightly overwhelmed, trio now faced with a massive influx of new users.

Hive has similar functions, from profile pages to long stream of consciousness threads. Users can change profile colors, add pronouns, post songs, and hold Q&As with followers. Hive can be used for anyone who doesn't want Musk on social media. Hive was gaining traction even before Musk took over. Many people have moved from the bird app to Hive. The app reached 1 million users on November 21st, more than doubling its user base, and it continues to grow.

Hive, an upstart entering the social media arena, has a hard road ahead of it. The app is broken and crawling when it does move. The team has been working around the clock to squash bugs, improve performance, and keep up with demand. The platform's content is also being moderated. Pop has been sleeping for about two hours a night. None of us have slept that much. It's fun because the app is something we're passionate about.

Hive would like to bring back fun to social media. Hive was launched by a self-taught coder who wants to bring back the golden era of social media by making it a happier place for people and a safe place for users to post content.

Pop says they're looking to bring on a fourth person "just because we're scaling really fast", but it won't be easy.

Hive needs to be more than just stable if it's going to succeed. It will need to have more protections in place for users and be moderated more vigorously than it is right now. Platforms can easily become overwhelmed by harassment, hate campaigns, and violent images. Hive needs to be built in those safeguards to avoid that.

There are pitfalls that other social media platforms experience. The chat-driven app that gained popularity early on in the Pandemic was called Clubhouse. It had problems with harassment, racism, and more as it grew. Daniel Kelley is the Director of Strategy and Operations at the ADL Center for Technology and Society. Once the founders realize that this is a problem, the idea of building to scale growth and staples on safety becomes a secondary concern.