Secret and why the first users of a social app should not be (male) thirty-somethings who work in tech

Secret, an anonymous gossip app that once was considered quite a big deal within the U.S tech community, is closing down due to lack of user activity, as announced some days ago by its founder.

I was never a fan of Secret and I did not like how heavily it was pushed by some American tech outlets. As I documented here, TechCrunch’s Secret coverage was ridiculously excessive considering the comparatively tiny group of users that was devoted to the service.

The exaggerated hype and the problematic ethics behind a service that lets anybody anonymously say anything about others aside, I am not very surprised about the end of Secret. Despite the heavy press and the short but intense hysteria about Secret within tech circles, I did not find it likely that Secret would be able to significantly increase its reach beyond industry geeks. While this is always easy to say in hindsight, I have a mental rule of thumb when judging the potential of a social app, which guided my evaluation: Continue Reading