5 ms·

This has been a fascinating story to watch unfold (and experience as a user.) When Secret came out, the addiction bug bit me hard too -- it was _extremely_ com

by nlh 12y ago

This has been a fascinating story to watch unfold (and experience as a user.) When Secret came out, the addiction bug bit me hard too -- it was _extremely_ compelling. I posted. My friends posted. Everyone was checking Secret obsessively. People were "communicating" with their exes (or so they thought), people were guessing who was posting what. It was fun. It was interesting. It pulled some emotional heartstrings (I had a few interactions with "friends" who I was pretty certain I would never have spoken with in real life - i.e. bad breakups, etc.) Then it took a nasty turn. There was gossip, there were attacks. They didn't get too bad, but the tone changed. Then they released the Android app. More users signed up. It started to take on a high school feeling ("omg my crush winked at me"). It got more popular. Then, at least in SF, it started being almost entirely about gay sexual fantasies. Friends in my circle started using it less, so it got less interesting to me. Eventually I stopped using it when nobody I knew was posting. After that, I stopped following. They did some massive redesign which seemed terrible, and I didn't really pay attention after that. In the end, it was a niche fad that had particular appeal if you were a tech person in SF. All the gossip - as taboo as it was - was interesting and compelling (I admit it!). It was a fun, exciting, interesting fad, but it succumbed to the sort of thing fads usually succumb to -- time. The problem with these sorts of things - flash in the pan community-specific fads - is that they're _incredibly_ hard to sustain, and even harder to monetize as a business. I certainly understand the instinct of VCs to throw money at a hot app experiencing meteoric growth (and I doubly understand the response of the founders to take both the investment and the secondary $), but it was a longshot to start with. Frankly, I admire them for giving it a shot, recognizing the reality, and returning the leftover capital. Well and rationally played all around, me thinks.

timr 12y ago
"When Secret came out, the addiction bug bit me hard too -- it was _extremely_ compelling....Then it took a nasty turn. There was gossip, there were attacks. They didn't get too bad, but the tone changed." And all of that, from what I recall, in the course of maybe three months. It wasn't hard to predict the decline -- the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory has been around since what, 2004? Maybe the investors who dump money into this kind of flash-in-the-pan stuff ought to wait a few minutes before signing the term sheets. But, oh yeah...because we're in a white-hot investment market, the Fear of Missing Out (aka Fear of the Greater Fool) doesn't let you stop to think.
- jusben1369 12y ago
  It seems to me that VC's take heat for investing too early, too late, too much and too little. Being too conservative or too risky. They're an easy punching bag.
  - timr 12y ago
    I don't ordinarily care what VC's do with their money (i.e. mostly lose it), but it's disingenuous to suggest that there aren't clear trends: it's very difficult to raise a series A, but if you're the hype-driven flavor-of-the-moment, you can close a round with little to no diligence, few metrics and none of the proof traditionally required of a series A investment. We're still seeing money get shoved at companies who had a moment in the sun on ProductHunt or Reddit, with zero validation of the underlying business prospects (or even much in the way of critical thinking). So yeah, VC's do take heat for investing too early, too late, too much and too little. It isn't a contradiction -- it's what people do when they act as a herd.
    - nostrademons 12y ago
      Because the best validation is people using your product. Or technically, the best validation is people paying for your product, but if they're doing that in amounts great enough for a VC to notice then you don't need to raise VC. The herd behavior comes from everyone having more-or-less the same metrics for what constitutes success: people using your product. If that metric isn't evident, you fall back on the fundraising strategy for people who don't have traction: try lots of VCs and hope that one buys into your vision enough to invest. If the next better metric - lots of revenue - is evident, then it's too late and chances are that someone else has already invested, or they don't need investment.
      - timr 12y ago
        Ehhh. Traction is a necessary, but insufficient condition for getting a series A. There's a "hotness" component here that's contributing to the overreaction. You can't explain things like (for example) Meerkat raising a big round and cratering the very next week without considering the importance of hype. Meerkat and Color and Secret are walking out the door with big checks while lots of other entrepreneurs with great metrics are waiting for their fifteenth meeting...because they're not in the tech gossip rags. Say what they will in public, I'll bet you that Meerkat's investors are wishing they'd sat on that term sheet for a couple of days.
jusben1369 12y ago
Seems like a good argument for channels? Sounds like you would have liked to have stayed connected to the latest happenings for the tech scene in SF.
nyamhap 12y ago
In my area Secret had a similar story - started out being popular with people in their 20+'s, putting out some insightful/funny content (perhaps with some light local context). Content slowly started spiraling downward toward very specific sort of circle-jerked inside jokes (e.g. jokes about some high-schools, fraternities and even specific kids at larger schools). Anyway it is a shame because there were people out there put out genuinely good content. The experience is similar with the app 'Fling' (Send snapchat-like picture to 50 random people) 70% of the content is guys lying in bed with 'lol hi any gurls?'. Perhaps a way to remedy this would be to cluster on 'like-mindedness'. Then have content show more according to whatever cluster you are in. Constant feedback on what you like and what you put out. Some good ML + NLP based filtering could give the impression at least that many like-minded people are using the app and inspire people to put out content. If you don't allow users to control the content they follow (Facebook / twitter / vine / youtube / snapchat - 'supervised') you have to direct the right kind of content to users in an 'unsupervised' way.
w4 12y ago
> Then, at least in SF, it started being almost entirely about gay sexual fantasies. Friends in my circle started using it less, so it got less interesting to me. Eventually I stopped using it when nobody I knew was posting. This happened in Boston as well. It was really odd how rapidly it changed from a mix of different types of posts to nearly all gay sex posts. I wonder if that won't flow over to Yik Yak now that Secret has shut down?
- droopyEyelids 12y ago
  Secret didn't have a mechanism to remove offensive posts that was as effective as Yik Yak's is. Yaks can be raunch as all get out, but there has to be something for the average person to relate to. If you follow it closely, you'll see there are many posts made while the author has lost their mind with hormones, but they're voted off in about 120 seconds.
  - simplexion 12y ago
    Yik Yak's mechanism for removing "offensive" posts is exactly why I stopped using it. The amount of mundane posts of mine that were deleted was incredible. Too many people take offense to so many things.
    - NamTaf 12y ago
      If the community as a whole doesn't like the content you post, could the problem perhaps instead be you rather than them? It sounds like the moderation was working for the good of the community, even if it meant some individuals (such as yourself) suffered for it.
pbreit 12y ago
Seems like they should have spent a lot of energy on making sure feeds were as compelling as possible for each user. I think there's definitely room for this type of service and the original Secret was fairly well-executed.
golergka 12y ago
My office had to have a special meeting about personal and sexual harassment on this app (some people decided to discuss colleagues on secret, and not their professional capacities). It started with fun prank, but ended up being really weird and awkward, and people were really hurt by the abuse. Needless to say, I wasn't a fan of the app afterwards.
DanielBMarkham 12y ago
I was also a user, and experienced many of these same things. Makes you wonder if they didn't spread their net too wide too quickly. Perhaps "Gay Secret for the SF area" might have taken off -- and given the team the chance to tweak/nail the experience.
reserva 12y ago
"Then they released the Android app. More users signed up. It started to take on a high school feeling" when you mention the injection of android users, aren't you really talking about inner city high school kids using the app on boostmobile and metropcs phones?

by nlh 12y ago

timr 12y ago

"When Secret came out, the addiction bug bit me hard too -- it was _extremely_ compelling....Then it took a nasty turn. There was gossip, there were attacks. They didn't get too bad, but the tone changed." And all of that, from what I recall, in the course of maybe three months. It wasn't hard to predict the decline -- the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory has been around since what, 2004? Maybe the investors who dump money into this kind of flash-in-the-pan stuff ought to wait a few minutes before signing the term sheets. But, oh yeah...because we're in a white-hot investment market, the Fear of Missing Out (aka Fear of the Greater Fool) doesn't let you stop to think.

jusben1369 12y ago
It seems to me that VC's take heat for investing too early, too late, too much and too little. Being too conservative or too risky. They're an easy punching bag.
- timr 12y ago
  I don't ordinarily care what VC's do with their money (i.e. mostly lose it), but it's disingenuous to suggest that there aren't clear trends: it's very difficult to raise a series A, but if you're the hype-driven flavor-of-the-moment, you can close a round with little to no diligence, few metrics and none of the proof traditionally required of a series A investment. We're still seeing money get shoved at companies who had a moment in the sun on ProductHunt or Reddit, with zero validation of the underlying business prospects (or even much in the way of critical thinking). So yeah, VC's do take heat for investing too early, too late, too much and too little. It isn't a contradiction -- it's what people do when they act as a herd.
  - nostrademons 12y ago
    Because the best validation is people using your product. Or technically, the best validation is people paying for your product, but if they're doing that in amounts great enough for a VC to notice then you don't need to raise VC. The herd behavior comes from everyone having more-or-less the same metrics for what constitutes success: people using your product. If that metric isn't evident, you fall back on the fundraising strategy for people who don't have traction: try lots of VCs and hope that one buys into your vision enough to invest. If the next better metric - lots of revenue - is evident, then it's too late and chances are that someone else has already invested, or they don't need investment.
    - timr 12y ago
      Ehhh. Traction is a necessary, but insufficient condition for getting a series A. There's a "hotness" component here that's contributing to the overreaction. You can't explain things like (for example) Meerkat raising a big round and cratering the very next week without considering the importance of hype. Meerkat and Color and Secret are walking out the door with big checks while lots of other entrepreneurs with great metrics are waiting for their fifteenth meeting...because they're not in the tech gossip rags. Say what they will in public, I'll bet you that Meerkat's investors are wishing they'd sat on that term sheet for a couple of days.

jusben1369 12y ago

Seems like a good argument for channels? Sounds like you would have liked to have stayed connected to the latest happenings for the tech scene in SF.

nyamhap 12y ago

In my area Secret had a similar story - started out being popular with people in their 20+'s, putting out some insightful/funny content (perhaps with some light local context). Content slowly started spiraling downward toward very specific sort of circle-jerked inside jokes (e.g. jokes about some high-schools, fraternities and even specific kids at larger schools). Anyway it is a shame because there were people out there put out genuinely good content. The experience is similar with the app 'Fling' (Send snapchat-like picture to 50 random people) 70% of the content is guys lying in bed with 'lol hi any gurls?'. Perhaps a way to remedy this would be to cluster on 'like-mindedness'. Then have content show more according to whatever cluster you are in. Constant feedback on what you like and what you put out. Some good ML + NLP based filtering could give the impression at least that many like-minded people are using the app and inspire people to put out content. If you don't allow users to control the content they follow (Facebook / twitter / vine / youtube / snapchat - 'supervised') you have to direct the right kind of content to users in an 'unsupervised' way.

w4 12y ago

> Then, at least in SF, it started being almost entirely about gay sexual fantasies. Friends in my circle started using it less, so it got less interesting to me. Eventually I stopped using it when nobody I knew was posting. This happened in Boston as well. It was really odd how rapidly it changed from a mix of different types of posts to nearly all gay sex posts. I wonder if that won't flow over to Yik Yak now that Secret has shut down?

droopyEyelids 12y ago
Secret didn't have a mechanism to remove offensive posts that was as effective as Yik Yak's is. Yaks can be raunch as all get out, but there has to be something for the average person to relate to. If you follow it closely, you'll see there are many posts made while the author has lost their mind with hormones, but they're voted off in about 120 seconds.
- simplexion 12y ago
  Yik Yak's mechanism for removing "offensive" posts is exactly why I stopped using it. The amount of mundane posts of mine that were deleted was incredible. Too many people take offense to so many things.
  - NamTaf 12y ago
    If the community as a whole doesn't like the content you post, could the problem perhaps instead be you rather than them? It sounds like the moderation was working for the good of the community, even if it meant some individuals (such as yourself) suffered for it.

pbreit 12y ago

Seems like they should have spent a lot of energy on making sure feeds were as compelling as possible for each user. I think there's definitely room for this type of service and the original Secret was fairly well-executed.

golergka 12y ago

My office had to have a special meeting about personal and sexual harassment on this app (some people decided to discuss colleagues on secret, and not their professional capacities). It started with fun prank, but ended up being really weird and awkward, and people were really hurt by the abuse. Needless to say, I wasn't a fan of the app afterwards.

DanielBMarkham 12y ago

I was also a user, and experienced many of these same things. Makes you wonder if they didn't spread their net too wide too quickly. Perhaps "Gay Secret for the SF area" might have taken off -- and given the team the chance to tweak/nail the experience.

reserva 12y ago

"Then they released the Android app. More users signed up. It started to take on a high school feeling" when you mention the injection of android users, aren't you really talking about inner city high school kids using the app on boostmobile and metropcs phones?