A lot of social life can be divided into front and backstage

Really embarrassed, the beginning must first the sociological scholar Goffman moved out, according to this predecessor's social interaction theory, many social life can divide into the foreground and the backstage, I understood namely "the person former set" and "the person latter set" the difference. The idea is that the same applies to social networks, where the 10-year-old real-name websites of Facebook (2004) and LinkedIn (2002) have revolved around Zuckerberg's advocacy of "openness" and "identity consistency". They are also the main records of our people before all kinds.

But it is clear that the micro-letter products, Snapchat, Path, Nextdoor and even secret and whisper to different degrees to the background, secret and whisper (local version of the secret and whispered) is an extreme, my intuitive response is that It's a bit like a fashion fad, a decade of reincarnation. Actually, people of the various scenes is objective, open and private, real name and anonymity are the necessities of life transforms, each social network also stressed a scene, but different times of strong demand, think about 10 years ago, the open spirit of the Internet is a very avantgarde things.

And conversely, "media is information", take Snapchat, its transmission unit is the life cycle of up to 10 seconds from photos, and so on, to a large extent it is the map of people's daily face-to-face ridicule, I saw you make faces, see "2 B, your sister" such words in the air disappeared. This is a very expressive medium form of deeply embedded content in the product.

and the product transmission unit of the class secret is like "some pictures and texts of the unidentified person conveying the psychological emotion or intention" (biased text), it's like writing "XXX is a jerk" on the wall on the school road, and of course sometimes it's like writing a blessing on someone on the wall of a tea shop, both of which can be found in secret. For a while "The Secret, at present," endocrine "power is greater than" creativity ", which is normal, because the" endocrine "content has always been very cheap, ready to produce, and there is no need for self-discipline.

What I'm trying to say is that social product is about how you shape this medium, the secret has been made this appearance is not a serious place, true and false industry insider, similar to the content of a lot of information flow, this may be with the seed users are more Internet circle of people, do not know how many people are the spirit of "evil" Psychological test products, because there is no need for self-discipline, and the point of "praise" is actually a very ambiguous interaction, I think this material is very fierce, very embarrassing may point "praise", which has become the habit of people to use social networks, even if sometimes people are talking about a very unfortunate story. Many big V, such as Marc Andreessen, also believe that such mechanisms actually encourage negative energy in society and make ordinary people more vulnerable.

So is it that anonymity can only touch the "endocrine" and with "creativity" has nothing to do with it? Products always define and shape people's behavior through certain mechanisms, while anonymity is only one element of the product, and anonymity as a form of freedom and security should have its potential to inspire creativity and positive energy. But practicality and creativity can be improved by increasing or decreasing the restrictive conditions. Sometimes, technology gives us a whole new kind of interactive situation.

A new product called RUMR, an anonymous chat room based on contacts, everyone in the chat process is only through different colors to distinguish, and the flow of information compared to the linear (in fact, I would like to say, the information flow is a stuffy island), chat is a real-time scene, which means greater transparency. Yes, the product sounds very game-playing, but my words don't come here to peep at private. It's a very imaginative scene, one of the positive things I can think of is that the teacher leads the kids to brainstorm, create ideas for a story and so on, to help them maximize their creativity, and friends who haven't met for years to join this group to see if they can recognize you, me, and him. I am not a product person, I hope more professional people come here to pat bricks.

As one of our other authors Cookirss, providing anonymous group chat provides only a bit more functionality, and other anonymous social applications can quickly mimic and add similar functionality, so RUMR needs to do a lot. But I think this is not to deny the current growth of anonymous applications, has been exploring more interesting, more advanced play This is a good thing, and do not rule out super normal things appear, long time the secret and other things are rejected as far as I see is certain.