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Understanding Connectors and Users

Let’s clarify what each means — and how they help you grow your network.

Bee Keeper avatar
Written by Bee Keeper
Updated today

In The Swarm, Connectors and Users work together to build your organization’s relationship graph.


🔗 What Are Connectors?

Connectors are people whose public professional information helps The Swarm map relationships across your network.

You can add connectors in by pasting LinkedIn profile URLs.

There’s no sign-up, no email, and no notification sent to them.

The Swarm automatically detects:

  • Work overlaps – shared employers or timelines.

  • Education overlaps – same school or class year.

  • Shared investors – mutual investors between your company and theirs.

All of this happens automatically, right out of the box. You don’t need to take any further action.


💡 Example

Add Sarah and Leila as connectors.

  • Sarah worked at Meta at the same time as Simon (CEO of your target).

  • Leila graduated from MIT the same year as Sam (Head of Product at your target).

  • Both companies share an investor — Sequoia.

That’s three warm paths from just two added connectors.


🗂️ Connector Groups

To keep things organized, connectors can be assigned to predefined groups:

  • Employees – your teammates are mapped automatically during onboarding.

  • Investors

  • Customers

  • Partners

  • Advisors

  • Others

Grouping connectors helps you understand who can open doors for you and makes relationship management easier.

(Custom groups are not yet supported.)


👥 What Are Users?

Users are members of your team with access to your shared Swarm workspace.

Every User is automatically added as a Connector, so their professional overlaps enrich your team’s network graph.

You can invite users and assign them roles:

  • Owner – manages billing, security, and roles.

  • Admin – manages users, connectors, and integrations.

  • Contributor – adds connectors and explores relationships.

  • Guest – read-only access (cannot see relationships of other Guests)

When someone accepts your invitation and joins your team, they can connect:

  • Their LinkedIn 1st-degree network

  • Google Calendar and Google Email Contacts

This gives your team deeper visibility into real, current connections.


🔍 Who to Add as Connectors vs. Users

Add as…

When to use

Sign-up required?

What you get

Connector

To map people you know — employees, customers, investors, advisors, or partners.

❌ No

Public relationship data (work, education, investors)

User

To give a teammate access to your Swarm workspace so they can connect their data sources like LinkedIn Connections, Google Email Contacts and Calendar

✅ Yes

Full access, richer and fresher relationship data

💡 Relationship Strength Score

Each mapped relationship has an automatically generated strength score, combining work, education, and investor overlaps to help you prioritize your warmest, most trusted paths.


Connector Limits by Plan

On the Base plan, you can add up to 250 connectors. The Premium plan increases this limit to 1,000 connectors—including both passive and active types combined.


✅ Summary

  • Connectors = people (inside or outside your team) whose public professional data helps map relationships.

  • Users = teammates with Swarm access — they’re also counted as connectors but can contribute data.

  • You can add anyone as a connector first, and later invite them as a user to enrich your shared network.

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