This all started with a very simple question: Do we fundamentally believe that technology can help us create more meaningful relationships and increase our social wellness?
If we believe the answer is yes, then we absolutely must do everything in our power and ability to try to find the answer. That's why we decided to build Ikaria.
We are not ignorant to the value of real, in-person communication and interaction, and we're not trying to replace it. We've done deep research on the psychology of relationships and loneliness, and the mental health impact of it. The problem exists with or without social media, although numerous studies have shown the problem can be exacerbated by social media.
Since we cannot avoid technology, we must reclaim it and give people spaces where they can form healthy habits and healthy relationships with their phones and each other. Very much like the fitness industry was born from a junk food epidemic, it's time for a shake-up in junk social nutrition.
Our goal is to bring healthy relational practices to the forefront. Very much like Calm and Headspace have done for mindfulness and mental health, we would like to do for social health. From what we've seen, the behaviors we learn in a digital space are transferable into the physical world.
We are working directly with experts and mental health professionals to help inform our product decisions and include them from the very beginning. This is bigger than any one person or idea, and we believe it's going to take a village.
So far, in our closed beta, people are reporting feeling closer to everyone in their groups, increased levels of happiness, and a positive relationship with the app. (i.e. "This is the only app where I allow notifications other than text")
For me, personally, it's brought me much closer to my parents and I keep in touch with them more than I ever have. I'd love for more people to have that experience.
We welcome criticism and support equally, thank you to everyone who has shown interest and has shared their views.
This is a totally fair question. I appreciate you giving me the benefit of the doubt.
When I designed and built Secret, it was based on an early community of people who were sharing things we'd never see on Facebook or anywhere else. I was touched by the vulnerable stories and conversations people were having. People would come to me and tell me Secret changed their life in positive ways. This is why I continued to work on it and believed that it was possible for it to do good in the world.
Ever since I left Secret, those moments always stuck with me. And even to this day people reach out and tell me they miss Secret; what I hear is that people still have a need to share vulnerably. That's why I decided to lick my wounds and get back to work.
Last August I hit a peak of loneliness after moving to LA, and using Instagram all the time. I felt like shit, like I wasn't enough, and I was really hard on myself and self critical. This led me to an emotional rock bottom. It wasn't until then that I demanded self love from myself and built myself back up emotionally, and it was that process that inspired me to help other who might feel like I did at that difficult point last August.
Personally, some of my values are:
— People are inherently good.
I believe everyone has a story and their own challenges, and if they can feel heard, they can feel accepted and become a healthy and thriving individual.
— Strangers are just friends waiting to happen.
We can be quick to judge other people, but we should always bias to listening and to asking questions to better understand where people are coming from.
— It starts with self love.
If you can't accept yourself, how can you ever truly know how to accept anyone else? Usually when we reject others, it's because we reject something about ourselves. I learned this lesson the hard way, and hope to bring more self compassion to others.
— It takes a village.
Pursuing any mission in life is greater than any one person. When I built Secret, initially it was mostly my idea and I designed it myself. I think that's the exception to the rule. With what we're building now, we've received so much support that all I can do is empower and enable people to do what they love to bring this mission to life.
— Leave it better than you found it.
Whatever situation you're in, do what you can to make a little better.
— Joy waits on the other side of fear.
Often the things we are afraid of are gateways to self-discovery and fulfilling our potential.
I could go on, but these are just some that come to mind now. You can read about the values of our company on our website at http://ikaria.co
This was the least polished part of the app. I have the next version already designed, which adds discovery improvements and more polish and depth to the interactions. Alas, we decided not to implement it before launch.
Hi, I'm one of the founders. Secret also has some important aspects worth discussing:
1) It's curated. By your friends. The posts you see are things that your friends are sharing.
2) Conversations are all within your circle of friends. As a result, we don't see much real trolling at all. The communities that are forming have been remarkably interesting and kind.
3) The penny arcade example is also not entirely applicable here. Again, because it's within your circle of friends. The equation is different.
You're probably noticing a recurring theme: We believe that by scoping anonymous sharing to your friends, the content will be much more positive and helpful. So far, this has remained true, and we're inspired to see the good come out in people when they're given the privilege of anonymity.
Most high-security sites do this (including banks, and even Facebook) to let you know when there's unusual activity. In order to recognize the anomalies, you need data. The meta point in our privacy policy is to be transparent about what data we retain and why.
We appreciate the probing questions, as we want to be as clear as possible about what, why, and how we're building Secret.
We think it's important to notify users when someone from a different device tries to log into your account. We will, to the best of our ability, make secrets untraceable. I can promise you that.
Hi, I'm one of the founders. The key differentiator is that you're sharing with the people you know. Secret allows you to have interesting conversations, anonymously, with your friends. On Whisper, you're doing this with strangers. They both have their own benefits.
Hi, I'm one of the founders. You said it exactly right – this is a place to share openly and honestly with your friends about day to day things and sentiments, and not for crime or other illegal activity.
That being said, we also have implemented a number of measures to prevent triangulation. For example, your friends' secrets will remain hidden until you have enough friends on the network. You can't just sign up with one contact, that won't work.
Hi, I'm one of the founders. We use unique device identifiers, which you can reset yourself on iOS, to help ensure account security. For example, when you log in from a new device.
Hi, I'm one of the founders. We ask for your phone number to connect you with your friends. We also encrypt unique identifiers so that your friends, nor us, can ever read your content.
There is something very important that hasn't been addressed in all of this fascinating discussion:
Social dynamics are different for every age group. I believe people fall in to four (4) different categories, all relative to when the WWW was first publicly available.
1. Those who were already established adults and working on their careers (our parents) (25-35+)
2. Those who were still developing and learning (probably everyone here) (~5-25)
3. Those who are usually stuck in their ways, less likely to learn (our gradparents) (60+)
4. Those who were born with the internet already extremely developed (kids in high school now, etc)
* note: the ages above are at the time the WWW launched, not ages today.
--
Each of these groups were subjected to different paradigms of social connection and privacy and therefore have different concerns or interests about privacy.
Group 1: Our parents are first were interested in using the internet to research, shop, and other non-social activities. Facebook was ours for a long time until eventually everyone's parents started joining, and now they are reaping the benefits and finding old connections with old friends, but they don't face the same issues of privacy, because they didn't develop a social life through Facebook like we (Group 2) have. Although, if your parents were like mine, they had initial reservations about putting their CC info online, or being searchable online, or having websites track their behaviors, while we (Group 2) were less concerned about it.
Group 2: Our group is the most sensitive to privacy, because we're the only group that knew what it was like before and after Facebook. We were also at an extremely social point of our lives when Facebook came out, and we still are now, even more so because of the addition of Facebook to our lives. We are mixing friends with coworkers with family and acquaintances. Our social lives grew side by side with Facebook. For us, Facebook is engrained in our lives and is part of the fabric of our lives. This wasn't the case for our parents.
Group 3: Our grandparents generally had no interest in learning to use the internet (with some exceptions, of course), let alone be on Facebook. This group is out of the realm of social networking online.
Group 4: The youth. They have grown up with social networks present and a part of their lives from the beginning. And just like our parents were apprehensive about things that we (Group 2) didn't care about, this group is less sensitive to the same privacy concerns that we are. The world is more open for them, and they are less likely to care about their privacy settings beyond hiding stuff from their parents. When you are in high school, you only have one group of people you know… kids in your high school. As you get older, you start to have multiple groups of friends from different stages, you high school friends, college friends, soccer team friends, work friends, and that is when privacy became a concern for us (Group 2).
The point is, it's going to be very hard to make one blanket solution that addresses every demographic, as privacy is not as much of a problem for anyone but Group 2, us. So, this is probably what Mark Zuckerberg sees, that the world is inevitably heading towards total openness, and that privacy is dead. I tend to agree that privacy is dead, and that people's lives in the future are going to be far more open than they ever were before. Instead of resisting it and trying to create all of these blanket private social networks (which all fail), we should embrace it.
This all started with a very simple question: Do we fundamentally believe that technology can help us create more meaningful relationships and increase our social wellness?
If we believe the answer is yes, then we absolutely must do everything in our power and ability to try to find the answer. That's why we decided to build Ikaria.
We are not ignorant to the value of real, in-person communication and interaction, and we're not trying to replace it. We've done deep research on the psychology of relationships and loneliness, and the mental health impact of it. The problem exists with or without social media, although numerous studies have shown the problem can be exacerbated by social media.
Since we cannot avoid technology, we must reclaim it and give people spaces where they can form healthy habits and healthy relationships with their phones and each other. Very much like the fitness industry was born from a junk food epidemic, it's time for a shake-up in junk social nutrition.
Our goal is to bring healthy relational practices to the forefront. Very much like Calm and Headspace have done for mindfulness and mental health, we would like to do for social health. From what we've seen, the behaviors we learn in a digital space are transferable into the physical world.
We are working directly with experts and mental health professionals to help inform our product decisions and include them from the very beginning. This is bigger than any one person or idea, and we believe it's going to take a village.
So far, in our closed beta, people are reporting feeling closer to everyone in their groups, increased levels of happiness, and a positive relationship with the app. (i.e. "This is the only app where I allow notifications other than text")
For me, personally, it's brought me much closer to my parents and I keep in touch with them more than I ever have. I'd love for more people to have that experience.
We welcome criticism and support equally, thank you to everyone who has shown interest and has shared their views.