Secret apps – the perfect antidote to social sharing anxiety?

Our friends' guilty pleasures from Spotify are streamed onto Facebook and other social networks, we’ve all had that awkward moment when Enya comes on shuffle… Training runs shared on Nike+ allow us to analyse our friends’ peak performances, seeing how quickly they have run off their Easter over-indulgence or how likely they are to complete their upcoming marathon. And in the main, it’s the popularity of social sign-in, logging in via your Facebook, Twitter or Google login, and the consequent ‘frictionless’ sharing, broadcasting details about our lives that is responsible.

The ubiquity of social media has made us all competitors in a game of publishing. Users are increasingly aware of success metrics on these platforms, posting statuses they we know will light up the newsfeeds and timelines of our friends, watching the numbers click up on the latest filtered image of our fantastic life. Got a new kitten? Quids in! Social media gold! We’re hashtagging ourselves to fame amongst a group of people we don’t necessarily know but we want to elicit a click from. Acceptance among some groups on these platforms is measured in engagement rates and leaves people searching for that killer piece of content… and it can all be pretty stress inducing. Social anxiety from the pressure of portraying a successful life is a genuine concern in today’s society and these social anonymity apps could be the perfect antidote to that.

Secret, the anonymous social sharing app, that along with the likes of Whisper, was the darling of this year’s SXSWi (South by Southwest Interactive) and has just launched to UK users. It marks a new generation of apps where you can tell people what you really think, be a scathing as you like, or as the founders would have you believe, share your innermost thoughts and secrets as a cathartic antidote to the world of social tracking. It will be interesting to see if Secret will gain any foothold in the UK, whether it appeals to our national sensibilities as a famously private nation. In the same way that ‘checking-in’ never really took hold due to us Brits’ social reserve, Secret sets us free to use some of that scathing British wit from behind the cloak of anonymity.

Does this UK launch, and a potential move towards greater use of such anonymous apps worry marketers? Well, to some extent, yes. Data is useful to tailor messaging – and ultimately conversion – and were these apps to take share from more data rich social networks it would be a hindrance. However, it’s probably too early to call. As with previous SXSWi tipped apps, the actual user volumes tend to start as a trickle, albeit an influential trickle.

From a content perspective, Buzzfeed’s recent deal with Whisper to publish some content from the platform suggests there is something attention-worthy there, but that’s not really anything new. Anyone who visited Postsecret.com knows that reading people's innermost secrets can be very entertaining. As for advertising on Whisper, the only two current examples are for TV shows or films – Universal Studios Valentine’s Day release ‘Endless Love’ and Hulu’s ‘Deadbeat’, both in the US.

However, if they find a decent sized audience it’s likely that these platforms will be of interest to advertisers, albeit mainly the most adventurous of brands. For the brave, campaigns are likely to be similar to those we’ve seen on Snapchat from the likes of French Connection and MTV: tactical and PR news-worthy rather than building sustained presence. From a brand protection perspective, the idea of anonymous feedback will be enough to scare most brands off in an instant.