Heard of Whisper?

Dubbed “the anti-Facebook” by magazines such as Business Insider and Forbes, Whisper is the smartphone application available on iOS & Android, that provides users a forum to anonymously send and receive messages. The types of messages that are posted are displayed as a text over an image, in fact at first they look a lot like memes. Here’s a post I found after searching ‘Ukraine’ on Whisper’s website.

As well as sending and receiving ‘messages’, users can also ‘heart’ posts, reply to the post with an anonymous post/picture of their own, or send a direct message to a user.

Now, can an anonymous social network gain a place at the crowded social media table? Anonymity is definitely a competitive advantage. Finally, we have a social media channel where everybody can actually express themselves freely, without the threat of backlash or worse having friends and family commenting and leering at your post! Whisper presents an opportunity for users to address more delicate and difficult subjects, and even rumours & whispers.
Although Whisper hasn’t released any official user numbers, there has been over a million downloads on the Google Play store. Yet Whisper unquestionably offers a great platform for content marketing and advertising, for both brands and marketers.

Hulu, the online US video subscription service, are the first to use the app as an advertising platform, with a campaign for one of its shows, ‘Deadbeat’ starting this week. Though it remains to be seen, whether Whisper will become a popular channel for story telling and increasing brand visibility.

So, will you use the “anti-Facebook’?