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Eric Mack/CNET
For the past few months, I’ve been cut out of the Cool Kids Club. That all changed on Wednesday when the covert sharing app Secret finally became available on Android, and internationally after being available only on iOS in the United States up until this point.
Now, with Secret downloaded on my trusty Moto X, I’m left wondering what all the hype was about.
Perhaps this is already old news to all you iPhone-toting folks who have been perusing the stream of fortune cookie-esque revelations, but there seem to be a few fundamental flaws in the concept:
1. Most “secrets” shared on Secret don’t really need to be secret, unless you’re a particularly self-conscious person who isn’t comfortable sharing things like “Sometimes it takes me weeks to mourn the loss of a fictional character on my favorite shows” on Facebook or Twitter where they belong. Also, to the friend of a friend who shared “Noticed I still have glitter on my face from the weekend. I’m a 30 year old male attorney and just came out of a 6-person meeting:” Sorry bud, I think your secret is already out.
2. The only thing that makes anything shared online even remotely believable is attaching a real name to it. With a name behind a claim, there’s potential accountability and therefore at least slightly more incentive not to make things up out of thin air, like: “Secret for Android shows you the identities of people who share stuff using the iOS version. Tres cool.”
However, some actual secrets do seem more believable, like this one:
“Bjork took a yoga class in Brooklyn Heights and her credit card got declined.”
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So maybe I won’t be finding any great scoops on Secret, but perhaps I’m being a little too cynical.
After only a few minutes on Secret for the first time, I do seem to have found a few kindred spirits, like the person who confessed that they are more productive when listening to Pitbull.
And then there’s this. All the posts I scrolled through on my first day on Secret came from friends of friends. All except one, the only one from a direct friend connection, which read: “Depressed. Beyond Depressed.”
Damn. I guess it’s time to check in with some folks in the real world. Maybe this silly app is good for something after all.
