Did you wake up this morning to see “Hive” trending in your social media feeds? Here’s what you need to know.
Hive is a social media app that has been around since October 2019, but has only been noticed by most people within the last 24 hours. Overnight the app exploded in popularity and, as of the time of this writing, Hive is the No. 1 social media app on Apple’s App Store and the No. 2 most-downloaded app overall.
Hive is still #1 !!! I’m not joking when I say I’m screenshotting and framing all this 🥲💛🐝 These are such important moments for me that I’ve only dreamed of so for it to be reality is just.. my heart bursts 🥺 pic.twitter.com/RmaEsbYsYX
— Hive (@TheHIVE_Social) February 3, 2021
At its core, Hive can be thought of as a nostalgic mashup of multiple social media apps. That is, aimed at people who are nostalgic for a time when social media apps were less bloated and algorithmically-driven. The app gives users a Twitter-like profile where they can post text, photos, or videos—with a heavy emphasis on the latter two (a la Instagram). And in a major callback to a time when social media was more innocent, Hive allows users to add a favorite background song to their profile–just like MySpace did.
As Hive’s creator, Kassandra Pop, told me in a Twitter DM, “Hive brings back the nostalgic feeling of MySpace with the ability to set songs on a user’s profile, and it also incorporates status posts where you can like, comment, and repost similar to Twitter. While written expression is critical, we still wanted users to showcase their life, hobbies, and talents! So we also added the ability to post media content such as photos and videos in a chronological order. Some have said it’s reminiscent of Instagram when it first began.”
So why did the app explode overnight? Tweeting from the Hive account, Pop said they paid a TikTok user to promote the app, and then, no joke, a One Direction “psychic” tweeted about the app, causing others on Twitter to take an interest.
We had @imanimlewis do a paid promotion for us on TikTok on Monday night and then @1DPsychic tweeted about us Tuesday morning as well and caught the attention of Stan Twitter. We’ve had a large influx of users because of them!🥺🐝💛 https://t.co/S9ygxaPRPT
— Hive (@TheHIVE_Social) February 3, 2021
Pop herself is the 22-year-old CEO of Hive and she works with a team of three others, including developers and a UI designer. As for her app’s newfound fame, she tells me, “While it’s definitely exhilarating, I also feel a sense of calm. We’ve worked at this for so long that such sudden astronomical growth happening and having to manage that almost feels natural,” adding that she loves interacting with all the app’s new supporters.
Hive Social is a free download on Apple’s App Store. An Android version of the app is coming soon.
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