College Campuses Go Crazy Over An App That Shares Your Secrets Anonymously
It's called Whisper.
Whisper is an iOS app that lets you anonymously share secrets in the form of digital postcard.
You don't have to interact with other people on the platform, but Whisper does enable you to leave hearts on posts you like, respond to a post with a Whisper of your own, and send messages.
Click here to jump straight to the walkthrough of the app >
Whisper is reminiscent of Post Secret, the mail-based community art project that lets users anonymously send in their secrets on the back of postcards.
PostSecret even launched an iOS app in September 2011, but decided to pull it from Apple's App Store three months later due to abusive content.
"Those memories are kind of bittersweet for me," PostSecret founder Frank Warren tells Business Insider. "It had a short but brilliant life."
For the three months the app was live, people created and shared millions of secrets, Warren says. And a lot of the stories were really moving and deep, Warren says.
But once inappropriate content started appearing on the app, Warren had to call it quits.
To prevent malicious content from appearing on Whisper, there's a flagging feature for users to report inappropriate content.
But despite having the flagging feature in place, Whisper already seems to be causing trouble.
Whisper has reportedly sparked fights at high school in South Florida, as well as a couple of fights at Marathon High School in New York.
Warren's advice for Whisper: Be aware of all that can happen when you allow strangers to anonymously share secrets and privately communicate.
"When you're talking about hundreds, or tens of thousands of users, you're talking about people who don't have the best intentions," Warren says. "And you're talking about young boys and girls, teenagers, sharing very intimate details in private. I just would hope they're aware of all the potentialities an app can enable between people and I hope they're careful with it."
As of December 2012, Whisper had more than 100,000 users. While we don't have updated numbers for Whisper, lots of college newspapers are talking about it. And a VC tells us that the app is doing well and has good engagement.
Business Insider reached out to Whisper co-founder Michael Heyward, but he declined to comment.