If you're on the Hive blockchain, you likely know the current story, but here's a quick summary anyway:
Elon Musk buys Twitter, turns the sack upside down and shakes a bunch of stuff loose from whatever was stuck to the bottom. Lotsa folks get fired, lots quit, lotsa users huff and puff and threaten to leave, and lots leave.
Lotsa folks say they're gonna head over to Mastodon. Some do.
Then "Hive Social" overnight takes off as the next big thing. It's shiny and new (read my theory on "New!" in my post from a couple of days ago).
Anyway, Hive Social has been in the news and is trending. The problem here, of course, is the name: Hive Social.
Fifty shades of Hive
How many Hives are there? Let us count the Hives. I currently see four "Hive" branded things that are involved in the tech scene in some way.
- Hive as in https://hive.io, the one that you are currently using to read this.
- HIVE Blockchain Technologies, LTD as in https://www.hiveblockchain.com.
- Hive as in https://hive.com.
- Hive Social as in https://www.hivesocial.app which is the latest media darling.
Let's briefly take a look at these.
1.The Web3 Hive is the hive.io Hive. This is the one dear to me and which I use almost daily. The important distinction from the others is this: with the hive.io Hive, you own your account, you own your content, you can't be kicked off, and you earn from your efforts.
2. hiveblockchain.com calls itself a "publicly traded crypto miner" on their home page. It's a corporation that mines crypto. And, it's the first thing that pops up in a Google search for "Hive blockchain", as below (Hive.io is second). Evidently, they mine Bitcoin and maybe ETH (Source: Yahoo Finance). As a corporation, they sell shares of stock. So, it sounds like a way for investors to "get into" a Bitcoin mining operation with a few mouse clicks. I really know nothing about the corp, but I'm immediately skeptical after glancing at their website. Here's why:
- They say they're bringing value to shareholders with their "unique HODL strategy." To me, HODL just means that you hold onto it; there's really nothing particularly unique about that.
- Secondly, and this is a big red flag in my eyes, their website is hyper slick, has animated graphics, and uses all of the buzzwords. Glitzy things make me nervous.
It's just unfortunate for the hive.io Hive that you can't even use the term "Hive blockchain" anywhere without injecting some type of ambiguity. To me, "Hive blockchain" refers to the actual blockchain called Hive...the hive.io one. I've used "#Hive blockchain" often on Twitter thinking I'm referring to the hive.io Hive. I'll likely rethink that use going forward. By contrast, Hiveblockchain.com is not a blockchain, it's a cryptocurrency mining company. Again, buzzwords.
To be fair, hiveblockchain.com is fine in my eyes. Take it for what it is: a corporation selling stock shares. Investors buy stock, the corp mines Bitcoin, then tries to turn a profit, maybe shareholders gain (no dividends offered presently), but maybe the stock price will increase. Fair enough. I'm all in favor of freedom and capitalism and doing your thing.
Worth noting: hiveblockchain.com threatened to sue the hive.io Hive when the name came up after the fork from Steem. Some background and links were written in a post by @phortun back during the fork time period. Someone, wish I could recall whom, later wrote a post making a good point. He or she analyzed some web data and concluded that rather than being harmed by the hive.io Hive name, the hiveblockchain.com Hive actually likely benefited from the buzz around the Steem fork and Hive naming.
3. hive.com comes up first in a Google search for "Hive", that is, after the current top stories (see below). The hive.com website explains that it is a "project management platform". I understand it to be a collaboration tool that might be used in a situation such as this: suppose a team of six people work remotely from home in different parts of the world. They have the goal of building a total marketing plan for a new widget. Maybe they want to build a website, enlist sponsors, set up a launch event of some sort, and pitch the product to a big corporation. They'll need to get a plan and work it. Obviously, they'll need to communicate and collaborate effectively. It seems that this is what hive.com tries to do (at least that's how I see it).
Again, this is certainly fine. There is a need for tools like this. More power to them.
4. Lately, HiveSocial (hivesocial.app) has been trending (see the Google search image below). The word on the streets is that people are leaving Twitter and joining HiveSocial. Of course, there is also Mastodon, which is a decentralized Twitter alternative. It's been in the news as well of late with all of the Twitter talk. I'm trying it out, for a second time, thanks to @someguy123's invitation to join Mastodon via privex.social. In this second time around with Mastodon, I still really don't get it...at least not yet.
Back to HiveSocial...it's centralized, like Twitter. I'm not entirely sure what the appeal is, other than the fact that it's seen as new and doesn't belong to Elon. It does belong to someone though, just not you, the user. And, as a web2 tool, you-the-user don't own your account or your content and you don't earn from your efforts there either. The platform earns off of you.
The only reason I'm writing about it here is because of the name. And frankly, I really don't know what to write about it other than the small paragraph above. It's simply yet another chat/social app owned and run by someone other than you or me.
What's more, my gut tells me this HiveSocial a flash-in-the-pan and its 15 minutes will be over soon. Then it will exist as a small, niche chat-thing. I read somewhere as someone complained that Elon Musk had no idea of what he was doing getting into Twitter. The argument was that he had no experience, was just angering people, and that he hadn't done anything to earn trust that he can make it work. Umm, yes, he's a different kind of cat, but (1) his Twitter game is as good as any, (2) he can run a company, (3) his success is pretty hard to discredit. I'd bet on him getting an established Twitter going strong over a start up.
Next step
To be fair, I'm thinking I'll check out Hive Social. My initial intent with this post was to try Hive Social and to write a review. The back story with the "other Hives" lengthened out more than expected. So, I think I'll set up an account on Hive Social, try it for a few days, then get back with a standalone review. I really have no interest in Hive Social, definitely don't want yet another social media, but since I'm interested in the hive.io Hive...Why not? The more you know...
Back to the hive.io Hive
The hive.io Hive has the triangular strength of being (1) social, (2) financial, and (3) technical. Oddly, in the Hive Wars, this is also a weakness...
- hiveblockchain.com is involved in the financial.
- hive.com is involved in the social and maybe technical.
- hivesocial.app is involved in the social.
And the hive.io Hive has all three. Hence, the confusion.
A lesson
A lesson I learned from writing this post is this: it's hard to even write about all of these Hives. Although I've always known there were other Hives out there, I've always thought of the Web3 Hive, the hive.io chain that forked from Steem, as the Hive. Writing about mulitiple Hives meant I had to refer to the hive.io Hive, and the hiveblockchain.com Hive, and the hive.com Hive, and the hivesocial.app Hive.
The name Hive is a good one for the hive.io blockchain. I love the logo and the idea of the community fueling the blockchain, the hive of users. However, I do regret that a unique name had not been chosen at the fork.
I think of ecency. After the fork, they rebranded from esteem to ecency. Esteem is a great name, but it is not particularly unique. It is common English word. When the announcement was made that ecency would be the new name, I was not immediately enamored. "It's what?", I thought. But, as time wore on, the mere exposure effect kicked in and the name has grown on me. And now I like it. More importantly, it's unique. The word ecency is the brand ecency.
(As I write this, it occurred to me that the same thing could be said for PeakD, who transitioned from SteemPeak. PeakD is unique and the name defines the brand.)
I've become a fan of uniquely spelled, yet pronounceable brand names. For instance, all of those strangely named drugs that we see on TV commercials. From memory: lunesta, flonase, skyrizi. The names are odd, but the names are the brands.
If only the Web3 hive.io Hive had gone with something more unique to be distinguishable. This, even if it was only a unique spelling, such as a leetspeak version, something like Hiv3.
(Hiv3.org is available, by the way.)
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