The northlondonhippy

Archive for September, 2011

I’ve been a big fan of Post Secret (postsecret.com) for years. I even included a pos­i­tive men­tion of it on my web­site nearly four years ago.

Its prob­a­bly one of the most pop­u­lar “blogs” on the inter­net, though call­ing it a “blog” doesn’t really fit as far as I can tell. It is much more than that.

Post Secret started out with a very sim­ple idea. The cre­ator, Frank War­ren, asked peo­ple to anony­mously send him pic­ture post­cards con­tain­ing their secrets. Many peo­ple have and many con­tinue to send him their deep­est and dark­est on a reg­u­lar basis. New secrets are posted on Sun­days and remain on the web­site for a week.

I’ve been a reg­u­lar vis­i­tor, mak­ing sure to vir­tu­ally swing by to read the lat­est every Sun­day, faith­fully for as long as I’ve known about it. Each visit always evokes some emo­tional response from me, whether its sym­pa­thy, or under­stand­ing or amuse­ment, I am always moved in some way, some­times to tears.

It’s good to feel.

I’ve learned a lot about peo­ple and the human con­di­tion too. It amazes me how cre­ative peo­ple are, how expres­sive an art form a sim­ple post card can be, but most of all, how will­ing the con­trib­u­tors are to share their inner most hopes, fears and long held secrets.

Not only has Frank has turned his web­site into a thriv­ing online com­mu­nity, but he has pub­lished many books and seems to be on tour, giv­ing lec­tures and shows across Amer­ica all the time. I own a few of his books and they include many post cards that haven’t appeared on the web­site. He really does get tons.

Early this morn­ing, Lon­don time, the long awaited Post Secret app (iTunes Link here) was finally made avail­able in the iTunes Store. It’s £1.49 ($1.99) and well worth adding to your col­lec­tion. It’s expected to be avail­able for Android soon, if that’s your plat­form of choice.

Frank and his design­ers have taken the con­cept of shar­ing secrets and built upon it, using the capa­bil­i­ties of your iPhone to make it so much more.

Of course, you can see other people’s secrets and there’s var­i­ous ways to do that. You can view the most pop­u­lar secrets, or the lat­est posted, but coolest of all, you can search them geo­graph­i­cally. Don’t worry, the app won’t show your home address, just your city or town, though it appears its pos­si­ble to tag it to a spe­cific pub­lic loca­tion, like a school or busi­ness. That is very cool.

How do the secrets get loca­tion tagged? Sim­ple, the app allows you to cre­ate your own secret post card, by tak­ing a photo, then adding some text on top, then decid­ing if you want to include a gen­eral loca­tion. I haven’t shared any secrets so far, so I haven’t tested it yet…but I might some­day and if I do, you won’t know it’s me, even if it’s tagged with Lon­don. I’m always anony­mous online, so you can see the obvi­ous appeal for me.

You can also “like” secrets, share them on Twit­ter and Face­book too.

I can’t rec­om­mend this app enough and I highly sug­gest you buy it right now. What are you wait­ing for??

Dis­claimer: I have no con­nec­tion to Post Secret what­so­ever, and I am not prof­it­ing from this endorse­ment in any way.