Twitter has been in the news a lot lately, and not all of it has been good. In the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, users have been fleeing to other social apps like open source microblogging platform Mastodon and niche communities like CounterSocial. Now, another social app called Hive is seeing a boost in sign-ups in response to the upheaval at Twitter.
The app today finds itself in the top 20 on the U.S. App Store after seeing a surge of new interest over the weekend as the situation at Twitter continues to devolve.
Founded in 2019 by then-22-year-old Kassandra Pop, Hive is not a direct Twitter clone. Instead, the Gen Z-focused social app was described in a Teen Vogue profile last year as combining concepts from a variety of social networks, including both Instagram and Twitter and even MySpace — the latter thanks to a feature that lets Hive users add music to their profiles, among other things.
Hive, a decentralized social media platform that launched last year as a fork of the now-defunct Steemit, has reached 1 million registered users.
The platform, which is based on the blockchain technology that underpins bitcoin, allows users to earn rewards for posting and curating content.
Hive has also been boosted by a number of high-profile users who have migrated to the platform, including popular YouTuber PewDiePie and entrepreneur Elon Musk.
The platform has been designed to be censorship-resistant, with content that is stored on the blockchain that cannot be removed or censored by Hive administrators.
This has led to some concerns that the platform could be used to spread harmful and false information.
However, Hive has implemented a number of measures to combat this, including a fact-checking system that allows users to flag content that they believe to be false or misleading.
The app is also not solely timeline-based, as Twitter is. In addition to the main feed, Hive’s users can explore their interests across a range of topic-based communities, like Science, Tech, Cars, Music, Fashion, Pets, Crafts, Books, Travel, Gaming, Art, Food and many others. Here, users can like, comment and repost the shared content, similar to other social networks, as well as click on hashtags to dive in further.
Hive has been gaining traction in the weeks leading up to Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and the days that followed. According to data from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower, around 214,000 of Hive’s total 733,000 lifetime installs across iOS and Android arrived over the last 30 days alone. Of note, Hive seems to have gained the attention of those outside the U.S. — its non-U.S. installs account for around 86% of Hive’s total downloads, Sensor Tower said.
Perhaps not coincidentally, this was around the time Musk decided to welcome back former President Donald Trump to Twitter by unlocking his account. Though Trump hasn’t yet tweeted, saying he prefers his own app Truth Social, it seems Musk’s move was enough to encourage even more of Twitter’s users to look for alternatives as they contemplate jumping ship.