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"On anonymous social media app Secret, you can be anyone you want \u2014 even yourself.\nMy new acquaintance, whom we'll call Steve, has just organized one of the first Secret IRL meetups, which began with this simple Secret: \"Starting yet another expensive, consumption habit: artisanal whiskey. San Francisco, you can keep your $4 toast.\"\n\nThe Secret appeared in my feed because Steve is a \"friend of friend,\" meaning a contact saved in my phone book is also saved in his. It could easily be someone we exchanged numbers with for an OKCupid date or to purchase furniture via Craigslist. The social filtering is what makes Secret unique from other anonymous apps Yik Yak and Whisper \u2014 there's no guarantee you'll see all posts from friends, because each user only sees a few new posts each day.\nSee also: 8 After-Work Apps to Melt Your Stress Away\nThe kicker that separates Secret from pseudonymous sites such as Reddit is that identity doesn't follow you \u2014 you cannot build a reputation. On each Secret thread, you're a new \"you.\" Thus, if you reveal yourself on Secret by sharing too much identifying information, it won't out your other Secrets. \nThe more I've used Secret, the more often I've seen invitations to extend the conversation outside the app. That is not surprising, as many users share personal, intimate information (fears, medical difficulties, early pregnancies) that could benefit from real-life support. \nPerhaps that's why four Secret users, upon finding they, first, share an affinity for whiskey and, second, live in New York, decided to meet. Steve dropped a shortened Bitly link into the thread that led to a calendar tool, and four users added the days they were available. Then Steve updated the thread with our date and venue: Friday, 8 p.m. at Maysville, a whiskey bar in Manhattan.\n\nSecret reveals location of popular posts, but only friends can comment on the thread.On my way to the blind whiskey date, I wondered what the interaction would be like \u2014 might the conversation skew personal and authentic, since the introduction had been made in that context?\nAlthough four Secret users confirmed in the thread that they would join, one cancelled, citing illness. Steve arrived with a friend, also a Secret user (we'll call him Ben), whom he had coincidentally run into on his way to the bar, but who did not post on the thread. All of us work in tech-related fields, which seems to be the case for the majority of Secret users.\nIn addition to talking about Secret itself, we also talked about failed relationships and work frustrations, which, once I mentioned I worked at Mashable, Steve said were \"off the record.\" This confirmed my suspicion that meeting on Secret might lead to us dropping, well, secrets \u2014 in real life, too.\nThe third Secret user, whom we'll call Green Bug, never arrived (users refer to each other by descriptions of the automatic avatars, such as Planet or Blue Crown). \n\nWhile in-person meeting resulting from an anonymous social network is likely rare, I'm impressed with how quickly it happened \u2014 within two weeks of downloading the app. That's faster than it took me to get an IRL meeting on some dating apps. \nBecause of users' desire to meet, Philip Kaplan, creator of anonymous message board F&amp;cked Company in the dot-com crash, launched a site for easy private messaging. It's called Anonyfish. After you choose a handle on Anonyfish, other Secret users can message you anonymously and privately.\nAfter we sampled three one-ounce pours of whiskey ranging from $1 to $9 each, Steve took a photo of our near-empty glasses and posted it back to Secret, with a note shaming Green Bug for standing us up. Despite being Steve's friend-of-friend, the post never showed up in my stream. But perhaps, under new identities, we'll all meet again."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2014/04/17/secret-app-meetups/>