Now that social media has popped off to a place where it has a mind of its own (a la copious bot accounts and the like), it can be hard to delineate, not only what’s real, but what’s useful and offers the content you want to see.
Hivemark is working to change that. The technology helps you identify notable profiles on Twitter and know who you interact with. It can help you discover like-minded users, identify fake/parody accounts, and improve your DM experience. (I’m personally excited about the latter because, if one more spam account messages me about my dog becoming a brand ambassador, I’m gonna scream.)
“It’s hard to know who you can trust online these days. At Hive.one, we are working on solving that problem — we analyze Twitter’s social graph and organize accounts into communities. We also rank each account based on its influence on a community,” wrote Hivemark founder Maciek Laskus on Product Hunt.
“Hivemark, our browser extension, shows these communities and ranks right inside Twitter’s Web app. You can see communities and rank information on your timeline, suggested accounts, profiles, and direct messages.”
In its messaging, Hivemark makes it clear that it’s working in tandem with Twitter and is not a competitor.
It works in creating rankings for each user, and will show a number that shows how other users rank in like-minded communities.
Rankings are intended to measure importance with respect to a given community. This is computed mostly from the Twitter follow graph with some contribution from the Twitter list graph. Essentially: high-ranking accounts are followed by many other high-ranking accounts.
While Hivemark indexes likes, retweets, tweets, etc. (which you can find on profile pages) it doesn’t yet incorporate them into rankings. It plans to in the future.
Community membership is inferred from followings, followers, and Twitter lists. The coverage of accounts on Twitter isn’t complete. Hivemark is expanding its index of accounts over time, prioritizing the most important ones first. It currently ranks once a month.
If you’re looking for a more curated social media experience, this might be for you. For me, if I want to see specific communities, I’ll use Reddit. I kind of like the mayhem of my Twitter timeline, but then again I mostly use Twitter recreationally.
Browser extensions are currently available for Chrome and Firefox.
Staff Writer, Taylor Leddin is a publicist and freelance writer for a number of national outlets. She was featured on Thrive Global as a successful woman in journalism, and is the editor-in-chief of The Tidbit. Taylor resides in Chicago and has a Bachelor in Communication Studies from Illinois State University.
