I’ve Got a Secret 2.0

Posted By Becket Morgan in App Picks, Features, Lifestyle, Mobile

BreakingModern — Secret, an app that allows you to anonymously share secrets with your friends, finished the year with a brand new 2.0 version for both Android and iOS. The new version received a lukewarm reception from users.

Mobile Gossip

Many early reviews of the app gushed about its addictive nature — knowing that the secrets you read were all from people in your network added layers of excitement to the already-risqué content. Also, as many of the early adopters had extensive networks in Silicon Valley, these users not only saw a large number of secrets, but the secrets themselves tended to be full of insider gossip. Even with some bizarre PR missteps this summer and a court case in Brazil following extensive use of the app as a platform for cyberbullying, Secret continued to grow in popularity throughout much of the year, with more than 15 million downloads in the first 10 months that it was on the market.

Enter Secret 2.0

Updates to both the Android and iOS versions of the app were released in late December and included significant changes to the look and the functionality of the app. According to co-founder, David Byttow, “the magic of Secret has always been the candid conversations,” and with this update they’ve taken the conversation to the next level by adding a user-requested private chat feature.

Anonymity is maintained, but users can engage in a private chat with another user — previously not possible within the Secret app. The new updates also let users browse posts by their location, company or school, and instead of a broad posting to the service, now you can choose which of the groups you wish to post to.

Secret has clearly defined and declared its policies and has promised that the moderators will review flagged information and potentially ban users who post contrary to the policy guidelines. To this end, the new 2.0 version of the app boasts increased safety and protection of users by detecting real names, keywords, sentiment and photos to analyze if the posts are a potential violation of the guidelines. Also, while the app previously discouraged use of real names, the new policy is to actively block posts which contain the names of private individuals whenever possible.

Android and iOS users alike seem underwhelmed by the changes included in the update. There are new location and identity-based requirements with version 2.0, which force users to sign in with a cell phone number and leave their device’s GPS on for full usage of the app. Some users are reporting issues with the app not loading due to problems with the location settings, and many users report that the app shows them in the wrong location. Users also seem dissatisfied with the new UI and have found that the changes are difficult to navigate.

Unique? Not so much.

While Secret 2.0 may be different from the previous versions, the similarities to other apps and services are striking. Secret now offers private messaging, but if the messages are idle for 24 hours, they disappear — Snapchat-style. The new layout on mobile shows five secrets, presented as small portions of text in a Twitter-like feed. The location-based sharing option is very familiar to users of Yik Yak. It’s worth noting that Yik Yak’s location-based features are cited as contributing to cyberbullying at multiple schools across the U.S., and by adding the location-based features to Secret — without any word on disabling the app on school grounds — Secret may be running the risk of hosting the same sort of dangerous posts.

Secret boasts that new and exciting changes are coming in 2015, and I for one am curious to see what they have in store.

Secret is free and available for Android on Google Play and Apple iOS.

For BMod, I’m Becket Morgan.

First/Featured/Header image: “Secret Comedy Podcast 06 - 2 August 2021” by Amnesty International UK via Flickr Creative Commons

All screenshots: Becket Morgan