Whisper is a proprietary Android mobile app (also available on iOS) available without charge. It is a form of anonymous social media, allowing users to post and share photo and video messages anonymously, although this claim has been challenged with privacy concerns over Whisper's handling of user data. The postings, called "whispers", consist of text superimposed over an image, and the background imagery is either automatically retrieved from Whisper's search engine or uploaded by the user. The app, launched in March 2012, is the main product of the media company WhisperText LLC, which was co-founded by CEO Michael Heyward, the son of the entertainment executive Andy Heyward, and Brad Brooks, who is the CEO of mobile messaging service TigerText. Since 2015, the service has sought to become more of a brand advertising platform, with promotional partnerships with Netflix, NBCUniversal, Disney, HBO, and MTV. According to TechCrunch, as of March 2017, Whisper has a total of 17 billion monthly pageviews on its mobile and desktop websites, social channels and publisher network, with 250 million monthly users across 187 countries. It is owned by MediaLab. In October 2022, Whisper was removed from the Apple App Store, but has since returned.
Features
Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic describes the service as follows:
User base
In April 2015, Whisper reached 10 million monthly active users. Stories about the app have appeared in Forbes, USA Today, The Washington Post, and Huffington Post, and Heyward was featured on Forbes' Top 30 under 30 in Technology list in January 2014. In early November 2013, Whisper was reported to have reached 2.5 billion monthly page views and nearly 3 billion page views in December 2013. Whisper has 10 billion monthly page views as of Spring 2015. In December 2015, it was reported that Whisper had reached 20 million active users, double the number of users it had six months earlier. In April 2016, it was reported that Whisper had reached over 30 million monthly active users. In terms of demographics, The New York Times named Whisper in September 2015 as a social media platform of choice for Generation Z in an article about Internet habits among Generation Z and Millennials. As of June 2017, 75% of Whisper's usership was between the ages of 18 and 34, and predominantly female, as reported by Fast Company magazine, which also added that: "According to CrowdTangle data, Whisper's Facebook page was the top-performing media fan page for interactions on the social network with approximately 200 million interactions in fiscal year 2016. If these metrics are correct, Whisper outperformed CNN, Vice, and BuzzFeed on Facebook for interactions."
Concept
CBS New York describes Whisper as "the place to go these days to vent, come clean, or peer into other people's secrets", and that the goal is that of "turning confessions into content".
The app purports to promote online anonymity, and the developer claims this will prevent and combat cyberbullying. In October 2015, Whisper announced a partnership with the Ad Council on the "I Am A Witness" anti-bullying campaign, along with other tech companies, including Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat, and in March 2016, Whisper announced a partnership with the Anti-Defamation League's Best Practices for Responding to Online Hate. The service's anonymity is claimed to have fostered a support network where concern and care among users has developed: according to Mashable, "The team regularly hears from users that the network's community has helped them stop self-harming behaviors." Another premise behind the service was to counter the "best possible self" ego-driven self-aggrandizing "vanity" posting done on Facebook, and as an antidote to the phenomenon of "oversharing" and "too much information" that young users engage in online. Business Insider, Forbes, and The Daily Dot have called it "the anti-Facebook", and Forbes Tech drew a contrast in stating that, "Whisper, even more than Snapchat, is the anti-Facebook." The digital-news website SMU SMC summed up all these points together: "In addition to preventing cyber bullies, Whisper gives users the opportunity to confess to things that could potentially ruin marriages, friendships or result in loss of job, without suffering consequences. You can over share without any repercussions." As described by Adweek, "This is a new type of social sharing, the kind that won't come back to haunt you."