The Secret app is an iOS app that allows people to share messages anonymously within their circle of friends, friends of friends, and with the entire World Wide Web. Founded by David Byttow and Chrys Bader-Wechsele, the addictive secret app has been taking the teenage and youth world by storm.
How Is the Secret App Different?
The secret app prides itself on the fact that it is solely designed for sharing with friends, which gives it an element of suspense, making it more interesting and addictive for people reading the updates.
Press coverage of the Secret app is pretty slim as people worldwide started taking notice of it only in early 2014; less than three months ago, however, the secret app has been recognized as the latest craze taking over the Silicon Valley.
Thinking about this application and its epidemic-like spreading across nations, the secret app is another anonymous networking application that aims to provide the social media world with an element that might be hard to find elsewhere, anonymity.
With Facebook and Twitter enforcing people to use their real names and no aliases, social media has always denounced the hidden and the alias, simply because it feared and continues to fear the cyberbully and the sexual predator. The Secret app is now one of the online outlets where one can be honest without fear of any consequence.
What if a teen or a young woman feels the urge to say things truly on his or her mind without having to do so under their real names and faces, Facebook and Twitter won’t let you do that or in best case scenarios, it will drive you into getting two separate identities which are borderline psychotic.
Features of the Secret App
1- It is free.
2- It allows users to post an image with a small number of text lines, a mini blog post if you will.
3- Secret will show the user posts from mutual contacts that also have the app as well as secrets from friends of those contacts and so on.
4- Once a user taps the little heart icon which indicates they like one of your posted secrets, that particular secret is shared with their friends and if one of those second-degree contacts taps the little heart, it goes to their contacts, imagine seven degrees of sharing if you will.
5- A user will never know whose secret they are reading or who posted and commented on what, there are no timelines, and there are no screen names or pseudonyms.
6- There is an undeniable element of surprise and secretiveness (hence the name) that makes the application truly addictive, while a user is certain that the secret posted must be done by one of his/her friends or colleagues, there is no way of finding out their actual identity.
Rachel Metz from MIT Technology Review writes “Secret also brought me posts that were snarky, stressed out, and wistful. Assuming all posts are true—and of course, some aren’t—I learned some very interesting things about my friends: one is in an open relationship, a second is pregnant, and a third believe his or her therapist thinks he or she’s a bad person. I have no idea who these secrets belong to, but it served as a constant reminder about how rarely we truly know what’s going on in other people’s lives.”
She adds “I, too, found it easier to share fears (and some happy thoughts, too) about work and life within the app’s somewhat closed network. Here, I didn’t know who, exactly, was in the audience, but if some of them were my friends I figured they would probably respond compassionately.”
The Downside of Anonymity
Can being anonymous have a downside? Of course, some may use this app and other similar apps to cyberbully and harass others by writing mean comments or silly judgmental responses. But the Secret app will allow the original poster of the secret to either delete comments or report them for being inappropriate comments. A user can also hide or report any secret they see for violating the terms of content on the Secret app.
Secret, is doing great for providing a safe space for people to let their inner thoughts out but you can never know about these things, we encourage you not to post secrets that will make you easily identifiable and to always comment on someone’s secret with positive comments; remember, revealing a secret is already brave enough without the evil comments.
As we would recommend to anyone using any app, not just Secret – please be sensible and use caution when using any online application where you share personal data. These can be a great way to pass the time and much fun with friends, but sadly when misused can have tough consequences, you wouldn’t want that, would you?