Whisper

Whisper

Whisper Categories [ ] Type Social Media Launch Date 2012 Status Active Product Line Confessions Platform iOS, Android Website Whisper Website

Whisper is an anonymous smartphone application that launched in March of 2012. It allows users to post anonymously and scroll through messages that are considered secrets. Users types a message or "secret" into the app, which then suggests an accompanying background photo. Alternatively, the user can search through their own photos and customize the look of their post. Users can scroll through popular posts, recent posts, or specific categories of posts and can “heart” them or reply to the poster. Whisper reached over 20 million active users and over 10 billion monthly page views in 2015. The app, like many other social networking applications, has its own sets of controversies and ethical issues, such as privacy, security, law enforcement conflict, and cyberbullying.

Users

Growth of Whisper has been exponential. In May 2013, the app had about 2 million users and in the year of 2015 they claimed that they have doubled their number of active users. As of December 2015, the anonymous-messaging app has reached over 20 million monthly active users. Because of the anonymity of the app it is difficult to determine the exact demographic of the users but Whisper has found its key age group is 18-24.

A collection of Whisper posts.

Features

Each user has a handle that is tied to them but they do have the opportunity to change it. After seeing a post, one can respond to a post publicly or privately. Whisper offers users to view posts by local location and in specific categories. When first opening the app, you can view by latest, most popular, nearby, or my school.

Categories

Whisper also offers its users to search for “whispers” based by category if they choose. These include Confessions, Personal, NSFW, Family, School, LGBTQ, Work, Animals, Tattoos and Piercings, Military, Food, Fashion, Faith, and Sports. Users do not have the option to post to a specific category but Whisper sorts them itself.

Location

The location-based feature allows users to look at whispers nearby and at a specific school. There is an option to look closer or farther away under the nearby tab. Each post also shows the exact distance from where one is at the time of viewing. The other location-based tab is the ability to set the school that you are around. The user must submit a request saying that they are on campus and get approved before viewing these posts and posting themselves.

Purpose

What a majority of Whisper posts seem to be about these days.

In general, Whisper is a social media application allowing users to share information and opinions. The main reason co-founders, Michael Heyward and Brad Brooks, created the application is because they felt that mainstream social media sites attempted to put people into one box too often. Rather than maintain a specific reputation, they believe people are more concerned with connecting to other people especially if they are struggling with similar issues. Whisper provides a platform to express concerns, joys, and fears without the opportunity of judgment. It is giving someone an out to keeping a secret and the chance to get something off their chest that they might not want to put on a public platform like Facebook. It is giving people a community of support to share “secrets”. Another use of Whisper has been just as an outlet for groups with opinions about a specific issue or topic. For example, when most social media was blocked in Iraq, Iraqi’s took to Whisper to share their statuses and updates rather than sit back in the dark.

Ethics

Like with any social media app, and specifically anonymous apps, privacy and safety are big concerns. There are also many issues with cyberbullying, threats, and people who share things that should be reported to law enforcement.

Privacy & Safety

Whisper has put into place a guideline in case law enforcement needs to be involved. However, this goes against their main vision for the anonymous-based app. There are benefits and drawbacks of each. Some benefits are that it creates a sense of security, offers privacy, protects reputations, and promotes freedom of speech. A few drawbacks are that it increases cyberbullying and reduces overall safety in the scenario that there is a threat and law enforcement is not able to respond quickly enough. There are also the dangers of online predators. This can be the case with any profile too but anonymity might be worse because there is no way to read into suspicious activity. This app is geared towards young adults who are usually the most susceptible to online predators, specifically at night when many social media apps are accessed. It is difficult to toe the line between keeping the role of anonymous server and being sure that the safety of users is a priority.