An anonymous social networking app called Secret is launching in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand today and, if its success in the US is anything to go by, it’s probably arrive on a phone near you. The bad news is, the Secret app scores highly on the creepy monitor allowing users to share short text messages or image posts with their wider social network (that means your online friends and friends of friends), but without revealing who wrote each update. Which sounds like a recipe for mean, Gossip Girl-style rumour spreading – without any risk of being caught.
The Secret app works by scanning you address book and showing your updates to a subsection of friends and friends of friends. Because the app allows you to remain completely anonymous, the iPhone and Android app allows users to post updates ranging from whistleblowing unjust employers, emotional confessions to – more likely – cruel gossip about their pals.
Chrys Bader-Wechseler described the launch to the Guardian: ‘We launched in the US three months ago, on January 30, and we've been testing the waters, making sure that Secret is nice and polished. We decided that the next logical step was to open the doors to the UK, and we're doing that on Monday. Once we made it a broadcast app, rather than just messaging, made it a stream, and made it so that you could connect with all your contacts, it took off.’
Because the app doesn’t disclose your number, the app has been used by lots of employees in America to break secrets about the companies they work for. In April, Nike was forced to deny rumours which started on Secret that the ‘douchebag execs’ were about to fire the entire development team behind Fuelband. New York Magazine also published an interview with a woman after she shared a story on Secret about the fact that her company was brought by Google, who then hired all the male staff on her team and let her go.
App develop Chrys likes the element of the app, but still insists that the real function of the app is to spread ‘smaller’, more personal stories. He explained: ‘I'm proud of shared secrets like the Nike and Google+ stories, but the ones that have been really impressive for me personally have been those from people struggling with panic, anxiety or depression. The support in the comments is brilliant, and it's not just emotional… there's been a lot of different types of information exchanged, with people sharing information of good doctors in their area.’
Yeah…we think it’s only a hop skip and a jump from ‘sharing information about good doctors’ to ‘sharing information about that girl I slept with last night’. You’ve been warned people.
Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophiecullinane
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.