Beyond Silicon Valley Secrets

How anonymity breeds confidence and could lead to greater adoption beyond the tech community. 

For the uninitiated Secret is a very well designed app that allows you to speak openly and anonymously with your friends. If you have a thought, opinion, feel like complaining then Secret allows you to do that without attaching an identity to what you post beyond a random icon. This icon is then your representation for that specific post should your friends (and friends of friends) decide to anonymously comment on what you posted.

Your initial Secret Feed consists of posts from people in your address book that are also on Secret. I live in Los Angeles and my list of contacts includes people from entertainment & digital media, architects, developers, designers, friends and family. Knowing that most people I know aren’t exactly keeping up with every new app to come out, I had a feeling Secret would be quiet. I was right. I had a bit of Silicon Valley gossip from “Friends of Friends” and posts from “California” that I believe were surfaced as popular secrets.

After a about a week of checking it daily I stopped using the app, due to low adoption amongst friends and lack of interesting thoughts appearing in my feed.

This last weekend I reinstalled Secret based off a tweet I saw and was happy to see more thoughts from friends and friends of friends as well as the inclusion of Nearby Secrets. I also noticed an improvement in relevancy in the Popular Secrets that were now being shown to me.

Then I saw the following post…

Depending on your sense of humor, you may find this funny or offensive. Personally I found it pretty funny since I avoid opening up Instagram on Thursday to skip seeing a mountain of out of focus photos of old photos of my friends when they were kids.

Now this got me thinking. What happened if the author of this Secret posted it on Twitter (a search on Twitter revealed it has not been posted there). The joke could have fallen flat with a group of people with resulting blowback. To the author it might have been more trouble than it’s worth. The fear of such public shaming and being identifiable is what I’m sure keeps the majority of the population from experimenting with thoughts like this online.

Secret has the potential to be a safe place for constructive feedback for upcoming writers and comedians as a place to test their jokes and opinions before they even post them to places like Twitter or Facebook. Through Secret’s commenting and “liking” mechanics they are also able to test the waters and get feedback from their friends and others that may see their post on Secret without ever revealing their identity.

Visually creative people not ready to publish to Behance or Dribbble could also test their work in early stages on Secret. This Secret I found from a while ago is a step in the right direction.

The initial support from the community is great. Reading further into the comments I discovered the person actually did not draw the painting they posted in the Secret photo. Surprisingly, the commenters in turn then encouraged the person to share his / her actual work (another positive effect).

Secret provides a place for those that are unsure and apprehensive about posting their material to public social media a reduced fear to share through anonymity. If someone were to share their work, then I could imagine a mix of feedback and encouragement that could only serve to help build this person’s courage to share their work further.

What about people who are not ready to share an addiction or medical issue and are looking for support from others in similar situations without revealing their identity. Secret could be a safe anonymous meeting place for people in need for support that aren’t ready to reveal their identities or go to meetings in person.

I’m willing to bet that the security of anonymity will encourage those that wouldn’t usually post on social media, to start contributing. People who would otherwise remain observers and sit on the sidelines, now have a place to speak and engage with others freely with a reduced fear of personal attacks to their actual identity. From what I’m already seeing the opportunity for people to have a different kind of social experience is emerging.

For more information about Secret I’d recommend checking out the following posts by the guys at Secret, as well as reviewing the FAQ if you’re not sure about checking out the app.

1. Why Build This
2. How Does it Work?
3. Secret FAQ

Finally, if you download Secret, please feel free to shoot me an invite if you like what you have read here. I can be found via adrianphi(at)gmail(dot)com