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Going from being no one to raising $10 million after developing a simple and viral concept, it’s the dream of everyone; but there are only a few winners in this market. Secret, the app that has been extremely popular in the US in the Tech community, has decided to expand its operations to address english based countries, including UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. With a venture round behind them, the next big move is to release an Android app.
Yes, without an Android application, you can still be worth more than £50 Million. The strategy seems to be what we were expecting. Secret can’t afford to move to other languages at the moment. Firstly because the complexity of the algorithm they are building changes and also because if you get traction with the english language, like Quora is doing, then you can move to other languages faster.
The next big update that the company will release soon is the Android app. With the app available in the US, their potential market will grow exponentially and that’s when we’ll see if they can increase their momentum or realise that this is just a niche market. Secret is one of those projects that come from the Tech community and then have expanded to non tech people. I am thinking about Uber, even then, the first early adopters were tech minded people, which were part of the 2.5% of the diffusion of innovations curve.
As soon as you get the traction with the early adopters, you have to test if there is a similar reception in between non tech people, who don’t like having problems with the service (in the case of Uber) or the app. Another thing to always keep in mind is the fact that non tech people are not as flexible as a tech ones, so there could be a completely different perception about the app.
What they’ll have to test and see in the next twelve months is if this app is a trend or a sustainable business. At this time, Secret is in a limbo, where we can also find Tinder and even Snapchat, which is a bit ahead compared to the last two. In this limbo, with a bit of funding, we still don’t know what these apps are and will be. It takes time and social approval from the community before finally getting out and start making money.
The problem with Secret is the question of “how long will people be interested in sharing secrets?”. The whole idea seems to be reasonable and even good from a ten, maybe even twenty years perspective; simply because people love sharing their secrets. However this app can disappear, overwhelmed by another trend, in the same amount of period in which has exponentially spread.
