Entering the Era of Private and Semi-Anonymous Apps

FEBRUARY 7, 2014, 12:00 PM

Entering the Era of Private and Semi-Anonymous Apps

By NICK BILTON

Today’s Web-enabled gadgets should come with a digital Miranda warning. “Anything you say or do online, from a status update to a selfie, can and will be used as evidence against you on the Internet.”

Over the past couple of years, it has become clear that everything we do online is somehow being tracked and tied back to our offline identity. Each update, Fav, Like or comment we make lives on in perpetuity.

It’s pretty hard to avoid this  — just ask Anthony Weiner.

But a slew of new apps — including Wut, Secret, Confide, Popcorn and Telegram — that have come out in recent months are offering hope to the Anthony Weiners of the world, and to the rest of us, too. They are intended to let users either talk secretly with people they know, or blurt out random comments to total strangers.

For example, Confide and Telegram allow you to send messages to people that “self-destruct” after they have been viewed.

With Confide, text is blocked out and can be seen only when you slide your finger over the screen. Receiving messages makes you feel like some sort of James Bond character.

Telegram offers private chatrooms where you can set a “timer” and all the text vanishes after a set period of time — usually one to five minutes.

Many of these messaging start-ups are clearly variations on SnapChat, an app that allows you to take and send a vanishing picture. It exploded in popularity last year.

But there are some that go beyond just messaging and are created to be social.

The idea of an “anonymous social network” might sound as ridiculous as a puppy that doesn’t like going outside for walks. Yet that’s how this new crop of social apps work.

Secret, which seems to be relishing its 15 minutes of fame, allows you to gossip anonymously about whatever you want. It’s unclear if the “secrets” being shared are fact or fiction or from whom they came.

But beware, open this app and you’ll find yourself in a sea of negativity, with apparent Silicon Valley citizens complaining about venture capitalists, founders of companies and their “friends.”

On Secret, the negative seems to be predominant at least partially because there are no consequences to what you say.

In an email message, David Byttow and Chrys Bader, co-founders of Secret, said the app was not intended to be full of spite, but rather to increase authenticity and empathy between people online.

“We’ve seen so many examples of amazing support both in our friend circle and shared by others,” the two said in the message. “Though, given the nature of the product, each user has their own, unique vantage point. And some of those vantage points will not publicly highlight the most positive aspects of Secret.”

They added: “We’ll continue to encourage positivity on Secret through our product and policy decisions every step of the way. ”

The new social app called Wut is a bit like Facebook with only your friends’ status updates and nothing more. It’s dead simple. When you send a message, only your friends will see it, yet they will have no idea the note came from you unless you say.

While it may sound totally bizarre, it’s also incredibly fun, and because you know it’s just your friends on the network, it’s surprisingly personal. Wut feels intended to make people feel good, not bad.

Paul McKellar, chief executive officer of Wut, said the app started as an experiment that he built in an hour for his friends, and it soon became apparent that it was highly addictive. He teamed up with Beamer Wilkins, a designer and app maker, and the two released the current incarnation of Wut last month.

Mr. McKellar said Wut is intended to be “a very lightweight and very casual social network.” He said there was “no doubt or fear with what you’re posting; there’s no anxiety.”

“I can post things on Wut that I don’t want to last forever,” he said. “And that message is unattributed and casually anonymous.” While the messages do live on the network for a short time, Mr. McKellar said they were deleted as soon as possible from the servers.

Additionally, Wut’s alerts are silent, so your phone doesn’t vibrate or ding loudly when someone sends a message on the network.

Then there is Popcorn Messaging, which allows you to privately chat with anyone in a one-mile radius of your smartphone. The app hopes to enable people to anonymously talk with other people at local events, including sports games, or to just find people to banter in the area.

All of these vanishing social apps could vanish themselves at some point –  viral sensations that go the way of Chatroulette. Or we could be reaching a point where people want online places to be able to share privately and semi-anonymously, and one of these apps will rise to the top.

It’s accurate to say that in some instances these apps are going to be used for things that may cross a moral line — like cheating on a significant other or organizing secret, nefarious meetings — but they also hold the promise of being used by people who want to have a little fun online, and don’t want the status update they share to be used as evidence against them later on the Internet.