Whisper Application Interface

"I am the receptionist at the company, but when everyone goes to lunch, I sneak into the big conference room and pretend to be CEO." ”

"Whenever I feel insecure in public, I always pretend to be on the phone." ”

"I'm 20 years old, but I sleep with fluffy toys every night." ”

Everyone has the secret of not to vomit, but in the open social network, by the real identity of the people are more willing to bask in their "happiness" side, and the secret deep inside. The first pioneering project of the American Macko Haiword (Michael Heyward) and Blade Brooks (Brad Brooks) was the short message application of tiger text messages (Tigertext), the most characteristic of which is to allow users to set SMS messages automatically deleted to protect privacy. But they soon discovered that private sharing was a huge and blank market.

Whisper co-founder Macko Haiword (Michael Heyward)

Whisper (Whisper in Chinese) was born. Contrary to traditional social media, Whisper abandoned the "old fashioned" pattern of intimate interaction between friends, but encouraged users to share the most intimate thoughts of their hearts, and a picture of "writing" full text was the hidden manifestation. "Now everyone seems to be their own brand marketing manager, from different angles to present their best side, but sometimes this is not true." April 10, Whisper co-founder Macko Haiword in an exclusive interview with Tencent Technology revealed its intention to develop the product.

Whisper is not the first mobile application to share privacy with strangers. Many people point out that the creation of the seven-year secret postcard production site PostSecret is the originator of this idea. PostSecret's mobile apps, however, were forced to stand down three months after being online because of some inappropriate rhetoric, such as violence or pornography.

Hayward points out that the reason why Whisper avoided the fate of PostSecret is to control the content from the very beginning. "We created an extremely complex background. For real-time release of text content and pictures to filter, if suspected of improper use, the publishing system will automatically put these content to wait for review. In addition, the team also manually filtered the content and established a community reporting mechanism. ”

More powerful than Postsecret,whisper's content publishing capabilities. Users can not only share their secrets anonymously through this application, but they can also "creatively" the secret. First of all, users can from the Internet or their own albums, Pick a "secret" picture and adjust the image with the built-in filter function, then you can enter the secret content you want to share in the picture and display it in a special font, and then click "Share" and the little secret is shared anonymously.

In addition, Whisper also gives the application of social functions. This application provides geo-positioning, in addition to viewing the hottest, most recent sharing information, users can also view the "nearby" users to share content. "Nearby" here is a relative concept whose scope is determined by the amount of information that is now shared, Hayward said. "This function is meant to create relevance. We want to introduce some features to trigger the user's empathy. It's not all about entertainment, it's a social factor. ”

These features have made Whisper, which was launched less than a year ago, a red-pop. It quickly gained more than millions of users on the iOS platform, especially among college students, and showed signs of emergence in Asia. Earlier this month, Whisper received 3 million dollars a round of financing, including the Speed of Light venture (Lightspeed Venture Patners), Trinity Ventures, and founder Brian Lee of the social shopping website ShoeDazzle.

It is worth mentioning that the speed of light venture partner Jeremy Liew also invested in "after the burn" application Snapchat. When he was asked by foreign media whether Whisper could be the next Snapchat, Liew affirmed that whisper, which can make users ' anonymous real self more attractive than Facebook or Instagram, would win more favor.

Private sharing wave

Whisper is driving new trends in private-sharing social media.

Whether it's Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, these social media have to disclose who they are, so it's also a way for users to be cautious about sharing their privacy, fearing that they will be searched by meat without paying attention and exposing their true identity. But even platforms like Facebook are starting to offer similar anonymous sharing.

"My boyfriend didn't expect this at all, but I'm breaking up with him!" This is the latest news from a New York University student on Facebook. Most people do not usually choose to advertise such private information on the web, especially between their friends and boyfriends. But the news is not a personal update, but an anonymous message on Facebook's "New York University Secret" fan page. This page allows students to express their most unknown secret, other than can browse, but also can respond.

Why are these shared private Web pages or apps so popular? The reason is that they provide a more intimate way for users to gain acceptance or express anxiety without having to face complex relationships in real life. This shared private circle has gradually emerged from college campuses and Facebook as a social networking tool.

After receiving 3 million of the funding, Hayward led a small team of 11 people to continue to expand Whisper's users in the Los Angeles area of Southern California. He revealed that at present in China, Japan and South Korea and other Asian regions, there is no publicity and marketing in the situation, has seen more and more users, and now there are companies to actively contact, hoping to whisper organized into the Asian market. In another two or three weeks, the application of the Android platform will be officially launched.

"Whisper has a great future ahead of us, but now we focus on fully implementing the plan, step-by-step, and create a better experience for our users," he said. "We want to connect everyone, and you'll see a lot of interesting features that will create social relationships in the future," Hayward said of Tencent's technology. ”

For now, Whisper's income comes from the letters monthly fee: A user must pay a monthly fee of six dollars to send letters to another user. As for the long term, Hayward is not worried, "whisper users spend an average of 30 minutes a day on the application, when your product occupies a large part of the user's life time, whether through advertising or pay function, it is not difficult to change." ”

The following Tencent science and technology interview with the record:

Tencent Technology: First of all, congratulations on your 3 million-dollar funding, which is a great news for Whisper. In previous interviews, you talked about the idea of starting whisper with Brad Brooks. You see a space in the mobile Internet that allows people to express their frustrations and share their privacy. Now this application is very popular among college students, do you specifically lock this group?

Hayward: This is actually very interesting, we didn't lock the college students ' ethnic groups in the beginning, everything happened naturally. Because these young people have just started a new life, and our social media environment is like living in a goldfish bowl, young people sometimes feel that they can only upload positive ideas, such as in front of their peers to draw an unreal image, so whisper will be particularly popular. We have found this phenomenon before we begin to focus on the users who are absorbing this group.

Tencent technology: Whisper's user stickiness is quite large, which is a big challenge for many social networking sites. How did whisper do it?

Hayward: I observed from myself and the user that Whisper's user loyalty is quite high, and people who have seen sticky data from other Web sites tell me that Whisper's numbers are high enough to break the table. I think one of the reasons is that when you see a social media environment, whether it's a mobile Internet or a Web page, one thing we have to remember is that each person has only so much time to allocate, something necessary like going to school, work, and family, and then some people spend their free time playing games, Facebook, Instagram, is a fairly saturated, competitive market. But whether you share photos with your friends or where you go, these products are mostly built on the circle of friends you already know.

The difference between whisper is that you don't share your life with someone you know, but you share it with a stranger, so your mindset is completely different. Users choose to whisper this platform because the experience is not replicated on other platforms. Other platforms are tied to their own identities, but Whisper does not carry any identity, so the unique relationships that users create are not comparable on other social platforms.

For example, a college student in Whisper said, my dream is to drop out to be a ballet dancer, but the secret is unknown to the world. And this person can share the secret of the heart with other users on the platform, and get recognition from it.

When you go to a restaurant, you see a lot of people taking pictures of their food, but then they think, "I'm going to put this picture on Facebook, Instagram, Foursquare, Yelp or Twitter?" These sites are linked to your identity, So the release of content is also limited. In contrast, Whisper provides an experience that cannot be interrupted by other social media, which is not easily retrieved by media such as Facebook.

Tencent technology: Users can hide under the screen and anonymous protection, how do you monitor inappropriate speech?

Hayward: From the outset, we have the best control over the content controls. We created an extremely complex backstage. We sift through the text content that is published in real time, and if we see a suspected improper use, the publishing system will automatically place the content in the part awaiting review. We also review the images, which are fully automated to detect inappropriate content. Of course, like other companies, we also have a team of manual filtration, and we also have a strong community patrol mechanism. But the most important thing is to rely on a powerful backend system. In fact, all social media have inappropriate content, this is very common things, the most important thing is that you can be found and removed in time, will not let you misunderstand the significance of the platform, just for these inappropriate content.

Tencent Science and Technology: one of the functions of Whisper also includes the location, but if you know the location of the author, not relative leakage of some information, this is completely anonymous with the original intention to violate?

Hayward: This function was meant to create relevance. We want to introduce a number of factors that trigger the user's empathy, but the location is quite meaningful for the content. For example, if you see a secret that says, I work at Starbucks, I actually secretly love a girl who works together. Readers will think, wow, maybe this is the Starbucks next to my home. Location based functionality has the effect of this relevance, not exclusively for entertainment, but for a little more social factors.

Tencent technology: Whisper is not the first private sharing of the application or site, many people will take postsecret compared to you, but PostSecret's website is still very popular, but its application due to too many inappropriate content, and forced to the shelves. What do you think you did right?

Hayward: The biggest two difference is that, first, when we decided to go into the product, we knew very well that content control was the most important point. All architectures are built around the ability to control content and remove content in a timely manner.

Yes, I'm also a big fan of PostSecret, and I think it's a great product, but it's just about publishing, and Whisper is more about social experience. You can respond, interact with other users, see who is nearby and chat with them, so it's more about forming a relationship and sharing feelings.

Tencent technology: Now whisper users can pay letters, what is your business model?

Hayward: Now we know that this product has a very important part in the user's life, we have users to release six to seven daily mood privacy, about 30 minutes a day in this application, seven months ago users are still actively using this platform. When this product occupies a great part of the user's life, it is not difficult to become a reality. Whether it's advertising or billing, we can't talk about it openly, but we have confidence in long-term liquidity.

Paying letters is actually interesting, and this part of the revenue is pretty good, better than we thought. The reason we wanted to charge for this service at first was that we didn't want to lose the value of the content. Because the content of these secrets is unique to us and extremely important. So we feel that if we open the letters function free, all the public content will become letters, like "I'm looking for roommates, letters me", "I'm doing these things, letters me", and it will become like Craigslist. So later we decided to use the charges to block these things, the results found in the revenue and products have achieved good results.

Tencent Science and Technology: currently whisper get 3 million of the investment in the user participation and stickiness are very high, what is the next step?

Hayward: We have something that is very special products, the future is likely to grow into a big future, but now we focus on the full implementation of the plan, step-by-step stability, to create a better experience for our users, to expand this experience, whether it is Android, the Internet or other platforms. At present the user likes us very much, and grows quickly with the speed, soon we almost have too late to cope with.

I think the important point is that we want to connect everyone, along with our planning, you will see a lot of interesting features to make the user form social relations.

Tencent Technology: Besides the university campus, do you have any plans to develop overseas market users?

Hayward: We are not focusing overseas, especially in Asia and the Middle East. But in the absence of marketing or localization at all, we observe that users grow very fast, like China, Japan, and Korea. In particular, we have seen so many users coming from Asia, and we are looking at the idea of developing overseas markets, and we are beginning to see if we can work with local partners. We have also received many unsolicited invitations from Asia, hoping to work with us to bring our products more organized to Asian countries.

Tencent technology: Do you have any partners in the Chinese market at present?

Hayward: We are now focusing on developing the U.S. market, and we understand that Asia is a very special market with unique challenges, and we know that the best way to get into these markets is to work with local partners. We didn't put too much thought in the first place, everything was spontaneous, so it also tells us that these markets are in demand for such products.