Meet Whisper: The most popular anonymous social app you've never heard of

Dove will soon learn just how effective these Whisper products are. It will be the platform’s first advertiser to test its campaign with third party research firm Millward Brown.

 

What is known right now is that anonymous social apps, once fallen out of favor due to privacy issues, are experiencing a resurgence in popularity. Just last month, two new platforms launched: Dusk, a live stream app that allows users to broadcast without revealing faces or voices, and Telegram, a messaging app that offers an anonymous blogging platform. Even Secret, an anonymous app that shuttered last year after facing criticism over privacy and bullying, might be resurrected.

 

Matt Tepper, chief strategy officer at Wunderman, said anonymous platforms like Whisper are attracting advertisers because they allow marketers to identify audiences in a more natural state. "Platforms such as Instagram are more about people displaying their ideal selves versus anonymous apps, which allow people to demonstrate their actual selves," he said.

 

In August, Goodby Silverstein & Partners used Whisper to launch a new eye emoji for the Ad Council’s "I Am A Witness" campaign for just that reason. Victoria Barbatelli, senior communications strategist at GSP, said the platform aligned with the campaign’s goal to unite people who have been bullied and those that have witnessed it. "Whisper has established itself as a safe space for people to share their secrets and their vulnerabilities," she said.

 

Whisper also caters to a young demographic. "It’s a rapidly growing app for our Gen Z target," said Barbatelli. According to Liebler, more than 80 percent of the app’s user base is between 17- to 34-years-old.

 

According to GSP, the Ad Council Whisper campaign was a success. Two sponsored posts generated 500,000 impressions and 2,000 replies, according to Barbatelli. "It was great to see people come out of the woodwork and begin to share their own experiences about being bullied," she said. "We didn’t experience any downsides." 

 

Of course, the downside to online anonymity is that it more easily allows for bad behavior. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, platforms where users can also create anonymous profiles, have become notorious for trolls spewing hate speech and have made attempts to curb it. Yik Yak, an anonymous app like Whisper, has dealt with copious reports of harassment, and colleges have banned the app to protect students from threats. It began requiring users to add handles to their profiles in August, but reversed the decision in November. 

 

A major concern for brands on anonymous sites is the risk of appearing alongside posts with messages they do not condone. "Anonymous social media is not for the faint of heart," said Rachel Pasqua, practice lead at MEC North America. "There’s the very real concern of being juxtaposed with content that’s off brand or off-color."

 

Whisper has a rigorous program to identify potentially harmful posts. Every whisper goes through what the company calls the "arbiter," a machine-learning program that checks for profanity and hate speech in real time. The arbiter reviews about 70 percent of the content. The rest goes to a human team. And like other social media sites, Whisper has community guidelines with a "golden rule": "Don’t be mean, don’t be gross and don’t use Whisper to break the law." And if a user posts about harming themselves, Whisper directs them to the company’s nonprofit YourVoice, which is dedicated to raising mental health awareness for young adults. 

 

It’s no secret that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have had issues with privacy in the past. On Whisper, identiable information is more difficult to detect unless a user places their name in their username which the platform advises users not to do. For its own purposes, the platform does assign every user with a random 40-character identifier, and collects user information and content, including text and images contained in posts, replies and chat messages. Whisper’s privacy policy states, "They may be viewed, shared and modified by our users, us and others for commercial or personal purposes." Whisper users automatically share their location when active in the app, but can choose to turn off location tracking when they are not using it. They can also opt-out of sharing their web browsing information. 

 

Still, for advertisers, the potential positives may outweigh any possible negatives. "The greater the risk, the greater the reward," said MEC’s Pasqua. "Where else are you going to get such candid points of view—and feedback—at such scale? Want to know what people really think of your brand or product? Whisper polls can tap into 30 million people who won’t have any problem telling you what they really think."

 

(This article first appeared on CampaignLive.com)