After Facebook's unsuccessful attempts at knocking off the anonymity crown of apps such as Snapchat and Secret, the social network is making another stab at letting users share more information anonymously with a new standalone app it is apparently working on.
The New York Times cites two sources with knowledge of Facebook plans who say that Facebook is veering off from its long-standing strategy of pushing for real user identities and will launch a new app in the coming weeks that will let users use pseudonyms to participate in discussions about subjects "which they may not be comfortable connecting to their real names." It's not clear if the app will allow users to be anonymous only to other users or if the anonymity will extend to Facebook itself.
Josh Miller, who owned the startup online discussions app Branch which was acquired by Facebook for $15 million, is reportedly the product manager leading the team behind Facebook's new anonymous app. The team, the sources say, has been working on the new product for an entire year and will roll out what seems to be a discussion board organized for people with certain interests.
"They were taking a vertical, like parenting or photography, and trying to get people excited about them in discussion boards with community leaders -- like old-school Internet forums as opposed to community-driven pages," says one source cited by Business Insider.
Sources say the app could be potentially useful for Facebook's planned online support communities for users with common medical problems, though it will also likely be used beyond health communities. A Facebook spokesperson says the company does not comment on rumors or speculation.
The report comes amid a backlash by users of the drag and bigger LGBT community, which recently became the target of Facebook's crackdown on users who prefer to use their stage names instead of their legal names. But Facebook has loosened up on its real names policy, with Chris Cox, Facebook's chief product officer, apologizing to the drag performers for "the hardship that we've put you through."
Until recently, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg had been adamantly against anonymity and was once heard saying that "having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity." But the Facebook founder has had a change of heart, not likely due to altruistic purposes but because of the growing popularity of anonymous apps that have been encroaching on Facebook's user base.
"I don't know if the balance has swung too far, but I definitely think we're at the point where we don't need to keep on only doing real-identity things," he says in an interview with Bloomberg. "If you're always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden."
