Anonymous sharing app Secret has one less secret: the app plans to integrate with Vkontakte, Russia’s most popular social network.
Since it launched internationally last month, Secret has proven especially popular in Russia, where it sits as the fourth most popular app in the country. This foray into a partnership with Vkontakte is likely to give it even more regional dominance, since it’ll pair Secret with an already-established social network. Sources told the Next Web that the arrangement will add a “new dimension” to interactions and messages, and TNW hypothesized that might mean using Vkontakte’s contact list to show Secret users posts from people within their network.
That’d be a big improvement for Secret. Right now, the app uses phone contacts to show its users posts from people they know. Integrating with a social network contact list would dramatically increase the amount of posts people get to see from their actual social circle, since users likely have more contacts on social media than they do phone contacts. I got a new phone last year and had to rebuild my phone contacts, and my phonebook is fairly anemic, partially because I talk to my friends and family using apps and social networking more than I call them. If Secret had integration with other social networks, I’d have a much larger and more interesting Secret feed instead of just seeing the most popular posts because no one on my contact list posts anything.
If the Vkontakte integration goes well and does include contact-swapping, Secret would be smart to consider doing the same kind of thing with Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.
Secret’s primary rival, Whisper, also offers global coverage, and Whisper users can sample what it’s like to use the app from anyplace in the world by selecting a location from a map on the “Nearby” feature. Secret doesn’t have that kind of functionality, but it’d also probably benefit from including something similar in its next update.
H/T The Next Web | Illustration by Jason Reed