VentureBeat

Among other things, Twitter is a thought market. In the same brief, fleeting moment you can whisper something in someone’s ear — or mutter it under your breath — you can commit it to the web via Twitter. And with that, the service provides you with the feeling that you can say what’s on your [...]

Among other things, Twitter is a thought market. In the same brief, fleeting moment you can whisper something in someone’s ear — or mutter it under your breath — you can commit it to the web via Twitter. And with that, the service provides you with the feeling that you can say what’s on your mind and hear what’s on the minds of others. You don’t necessarily have to provide any explanation or context the way you would if you were saying it out loud to someone or divulging it on a blog. In its inherent brevity (i.e., 140 character limitation on Tweets), Twitter gives you an outlet not many other mediums do, with the added benefit of an audience.

But up until the launch of SecretTweet a little less than a year ago, if you wanted to say something, there wasn’t a popular, organized means for you to share your Twitters anonymously, since your musings are tied to your account. But what if you wanted to get a thought or secret out in the open, without anyone knowing it was yours? SecretTweet, much like the popular blog Post Secret (which encourages people to write their secrets on cards to be posted online), allows you to do that — instantly, and for the growing audience of your Twitter peers.

From ripping on eBay’s strategy to Googling people’s houses

Initiated by Twitter user @mozunk, the SecretTweet site — through which folks can submit their anonymous tweets, as well as read and comment on others’ — has attracted over 35,000 readers daily, according to a company blog post from last month.

The submissions, which are all said to be moderated before they get pushed to the corresponding @secrettweet account on Twitter, have ranged in motif from humorous to personal to professional to downright scandalous — and sometimes a wee bit revealing. Take these examples:

• “I’m a VP at eBay — I hate my job. eBay doesn’t know who it is — the strategy is to fill the space between Amazon [eBay] Craigslist.”


• “I Google Earth people’s houses after I meet them. and then judge them based on their house. yours was pretty nice, i approve.”


• “My employer cut my pay, thats ok though. i more than make up for the loss by selling our secrets to the competition.”


• “I fell in love with my stalker.”


• “Sometimes when I’m watching you sleep it’s almost impossible not to wake you and tell you how beautiful you are.”


• “I stole the identity of a dead guy with the same name as my son, open credit cards and then moved. I sometimes think I’ll get caught.”

Sadly, according to SecretTweet, an uncomfortably large group of entries relate “to personal struggle and suicide.” In response, the service, which strives to remain impartial, has linked to a suicide prevention site and provides stats around suicides in the US.

You can find follow me on Twitter here as well as VentureBeatniks MG Siegler, Eric Eldon, Dean Takahashi, Anthony Ha, Chris Morrison, Tam Vo, Camille Ricketts, Dan Kaplan and Matt Marshall. We have a VentureBeat account (for posts) as well.

[photo: flickr/naama]

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