“Share your thoughts. Make new friends! Be yourself,” encourages Whisper’s promo video, above.
The free iOS and Android app Whisper, which launched May 2012, lets users post and receive messages and secrets anonymously. The startup calls itself a “private, anti-social networking app” because it does not save, store or collect any information — including names, emails or phone numbers — about users, in order to protect their anonymity.
See also: The Beginner's Guide to Vine
The messages are called “whispers,” and they look similar to a meme, stylized card or Instagram overlay. Essentially, they're images with superimposed text.

Image: Whisper
Whisper taps into people’s eagerness to be heard and accepted without fear of judgment. People use the platform to disclose amusing observations, unload a deeply personal secret, reach out for advice or just see if there’s anyone out there they can relate to.
Earlier this month, the app lured away one of Gawker’s big traffic drivers, senior editor Neetzan Zimmerman, who will become Whisper’s editor in chief. He and others have hailed Whisper the “anti-Facebook”. In other words, our identity doesn’t matter on Whisper, while Zuckerberg’s site urges users to curate their best possible selves.
Here, instead of carefully managing your reputation, you can theoretically be 100% yourself.

Image: Whisper
As of October 2013, Whisper has earned 2.8 billion pageviews and boasts 4 million users, who collectively spend hundreds of millions of minutes on Whisper each month. A team of 70 Manila, Phillippines-based moderators filter the hundreds of thousands of whispers uploaded daily.
Whisper is reasonably user-friendly from the get-go, but these tips will help you get started.
Whisper certainly has more than its fair share of promiscuity and impassioned teen angst, but users also include deployed soldiers, loving spouses and those who support LGBT pride. Secrets run the complete emotional spectrum, from mundane to hilarious to heartbreaking.

Image: Whisper
Originally intended for a college-aged crowd — there’s a “17 and older” necessary verification upon downloading — Whisper has, like most other cool, new things, trickled down to a younger age group known for oversharing.
Since Whisper claims it doesn’t store its users’ personal data, you can’t search for users, view others’ profiles or see who "hearts" your whispers.
Its community guidelines dictate, “We automatically collect usage information that does not identify an individual user but allows us to collect information regarding how users access and use Services ('Usage Data'). For example, when you download and use Services, we automatically collect information on the type of device you use, operating system version, and the device identifier (or 'UDID').” There’s a lot of data tied up in Whisper.
Be warned: Whisper also states, “Although we strive to delete your Message Data as soon as the message is transmitted, we cannot guarantee that the Message Data will be completely deleted.” Message data, by the way, includes “messages, log and contact data, and other related information.”
Accordingly, the terms of use state that any whispers and direct messages you send are at your own risk, and personal information may be shared if Whisper as a company is sold, merged or acquired, or if there is a transfer of some or all assets. The same would be true in the event of a subpoena, court order or other enforceable governmental request.
First things first — create a profile. You need a unique handle, but the app isn’t connected to any of your other social media profiles, unlike others that encourage a login via Facebook or Twitter. Consider creating a username you've never used elsewhere, if you want to maintain complete anonymity.
To further protect your privacy, Whisper requires a four-digit pin number every single time you access your history, or “Activity” — i.e., to view or delete your whispers, whisper engagements and direct messages.
To add a whisper to the real-time “Whisper-verse,” touch the round plus sign at the bottom of the screen.
You can view whispers on the site, but can only create and engage with them via the mobile app.

Image: Whisper
Enter your text in one of four fonts and arrange it on the screen. The text pops up centered. If you’re going for engagement, keep in mind that whispers in the form of questions often generate the most replies.

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Here you have three options. As soon as you enter your text and hit “next,” Whisper automatically chooses an image.
If you hit “search” at the bottom, however, you can also search for a specific image. If you hit “camera” at the bottom, you can use an image from your personal camera roll, if you’ve given the app access.
Ergo, you could select an image to accompany words entirely unrelated to that image (for example, a picture of a bunny and the text “The Tenth Doctor is the best. Don’t you agree?”).

Image: Whisper
Whisper automatically adds tags to your message. You can add to them, too, although Whisper is fairly comprehensive. They function just like tags on Tumblr or hashtags on Twitter, categorizing your work and allowing people to find it more easily.

Image: Whisper
If you’ve enabled location services, you location will generate alongside your whisper, which takes your anonymity down a notch. Tap the pin icon in the upper left-hand corner to choose your location — your options range from specific store locations to the entire state.
If you don’t want to broadcast your location, tap the pin icon, scroll down to the bottom and hit “don’t show my location.”

Image: Whisper
Hit “post,” and your whisper will go live. You can tap on “Latest” to see your whisper in the feed. (More on that below.)

Image: Whisper
Tapping on a whisper brings up three options: “heart,” reply and direct message.
Similar to Instagram, double-tapping an image awards a heart to the whisper. Yes, you can heart your own whisper.
Users’ replies are public, also in the form of a whisper. Tapping on any given whisper makes it easy to scroll through replies. You can award hearts to replies.
Direct messaging used to be an in-app purchase, but now it’s free. Like Twitter, it connects you with a fellow user for a one-on-one conversation.
And if you want to send your whisper via email, text or to a social media site, hit “share” in the bottom right-hand corner.
Anonymity doesn’t mean you can post whatever you want. If multiple users flag your whisper as inappropriate, it’ll be deleted.
Like other platforms, you can search for whispers by specific locations or keywords — this is where tags come into play.
On the app, you can scroll among four viewing options: Featured, Popular, Nearby and Latest.
Featured whispers, meant to display the most unique whispers, are hand-selected daily by content managers. Alternatively, popular whispers are chosen based on the popularity of any given whisper, awarded via hearts and replies. The most user-engaged whispers are sent to the top of the page.
These list real-time whispers, aggregated from all Whisper users.

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“Nearby” lets you view whispers from users less than 25 miles away. Use this feature if you only want to read whispers from within your vicinity. Tap on a whisper’s pin icon and the app will list all the whispers from that specific location.

Image: Whisper
There are times when you might want to browse Whisper on your computer, instead of your phone. The responsive site shares many similarities with Tumblr, including one main panel to display whispers. A number of trending tags, such as #FriendZone or #SometimesI, are displayed on the right. You can share whispers on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or Pinterest.
These days, people are extremely hesitant to share their private data, let alone with a social media app. Even major companies severely mismanaged the most popular mobile payment app in the U.S., so it’s no wonder apps that don’t require our personal information are rising in popularity.
It remains to be seen whether vigilant Whisper users will alert the masses to criminal activity and newsworthy stories, while still remaining anonymous.
Whisper will likely also use its $21 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Trinity Ventures to continue to grow and work on implementing new features — perhaps un-hearting a whisper and adding more fonts?
Anonymous apps come with a unique set of challenges, and time will tell if Whisper goes the way of the PostSecret iPhone app — the creators shut it down in January 2012 after only three months, due to the high amount of malicious and pornographic content.
And as always, we should remain mindful about meeting up with fellow users face-to-face, especially on a platform based on anonymity.
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