Secrets and Whispers: Confession apps take off
I slept with my boss’s husband. I fixed my office World Cup pool so I would get Spain. My wife was a size 6 when I met her and now she is a size 16 - I am no longer attracted to her.
These are just some of the confessions I’ve seen made by Irish people on secret-sharing apps Secret and Whisper, which, after releasing months ago, are finally starting to pick up steam.
What’s the story? Should you care?
Both apps have the same goal in mind: to allow users to confess their secrets without fear of being identified. But they go about it in very different ways.
pillages your phone’s contacts book to find people you know. It matches email addresses and phone numbers - but keeps identities behind closed doors. It won’t display names. And if you have too few friends on the app, it won’t show you secrets at all - you need to have at least five to keep you guessing.
, on the other hand, will display your confession publicly on a map. Everyone there has a nonsense name made up by the app, and strangers can see, and even chat to one another.
Secret is much more closed; Whisper, on the other hand, connects strangers - meaning it’s more widely used by a younger, flirtier crowd, with plenty of users looking to chat or meet up - and it’s more popular.
Some things are best said in secret. Whisper made headlines in February of this year when an anonymous user on the app claimed Gwyneth Paltrow was cheating on her husband, Chris Martin.
A month later, the couple had split - though the rumour was never substantiated. It was enough to generate a lot of interest in the app, however.
Those kind of big, insider confessions are only a small part of the app’s popularity, however. Secret, in particular, is a place for people to vent about issues big and small. There are a lot of sexual confessions on both apps, and some insights into how work and office culture works.
These aren’t the kind of things you can say within a boss’s earshot - or be comfortable saying if you can be identified at all.
There are also some things people just can’t say in public without consequences from their social circle. There is plenty of nasty sniping at friends - like a safer version of the subtweet, or good-old fashioned bitching.
Whisper is much more popular - it’s been around longer, and is much higher on the best-seller charts on iOS.
But Secret has a whole different lure - it’s people you know, or at least people you know know them. Trying to figure out who said what adds a level of cat-and-mouse to the app that’s genuinely engaging.
So each has a different purpose: Whisper is akin to eavesdropping on strangers, while Secret feels more like reading a friend’s diary - even if they’ve left it out for you.
Whisper doesn’t collect any user data at all. You can’t search for user profiles - only topics. There’s nothing linking the real you to your data, the company promises.
Secret is a bit more complicated, since it uses your phone number and email to find people you know. But the company’s top promise is that they will reveal your information, and has even written a blog post on the technical side of things. They also have a giant button in the app to disconnect you from anything you’ve written.
At the end of the day, there’s an element of trust involved - but privacy is the entire point of the company. If they break that trust, it’s a big problem for them.
The apps are smartphone-only, so you’ll need to head to the App Store of Google Play on your device, or hit the links below:
Secret:
•App Store link
• Android link
Whisper:
•App Store link
• Android link
