It doesn’t seem so long ago that many people thought social networking was done, and that anything that wasn’t Facebook would become a feature, app or acquisition of the social juggernaut.
In the past year, however, that’s started to change. Snapchat brought ephemerality to photo sharing, Nextdoor is reconnecting real-world neighboursand Whatsapp, WeChat and Line are fighting for mobile instant-messaging dominance.
Now, backed by some of Snapchat’s original investors, comesWhisper– an app for sharing (and viewing) secrets,
posted anonymously.
If that sounds a bit like the popular community art projectPostSecret, well, it is. But rather than mailing in physical postcards, Whisper makes it easy to upload a photo overlaid with the confiding text.
“Facebook is the journal of record for your life, which implies that it’s permanent and personal,” says Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners, an early investor in both Whisper and Snapchat. “What Snapchat did is say hey, what if it wasn’t permanent? Whisper says hey, what if it wasn’t personal?”
If trading secrets with strangers sounds like a niche market, Whisper has some numbers to shout about: the app’s backers claim usage has risen fivefold, from a substantial 500m pageviews a month in March to 2.5bn today.
Growth like that incurs hefty infrastructure costs, and so Whisper is raising $21m in Series B financing led by Sequoia Capital’s Roelof Botha, who has previously backed YouTube, Tumblr and Instagram, and will join the board. Lightspeed is also increasing its stake as part of the round.Reports have pegged the valuationin the region of $75m to $100m.
That’s on the larger side for a Series B funding. Mr Liew says that – like Snapchat – he sees potential in Whisper’s high level of engagement (users return several times a day) by providing an outlet for an unmet need:
“The sorts of things people are sharing here really are secrets. Facebook and Twitter are places where you’re always carefully cultivating your image – you have to be happy and successful and funny. You are the best version of yourself there but that’s not the whole you. You’re also anxious and sad and nervous. There is a whole gamut of emotions that people go through. What Whisper allows, because it’s anonymous, is for people to share all the things they’re feeling.”
“It’s not just about secrets or confessions – it’s about connecting with people you do not know,” he says. “Sharing with people you don’t know is going to be just as big as sharing with people you do know. It’s about connecting you to the world around you without the social media fishbowl, just very authentic and raw.”
LATE NIGHT CONFESSION/SECRET POST ONTD!
mods this is a different article from the one i posted originally, we've had several other posts about different apps and websites similar to this one so please accept!
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