Whisper

The app was launched in March 2012 by WhisperText LLC. It was co-founded by CEO Michael Heyward and Brad Brooks.

Beginning in 2015, the service sought to become more of a brand advertising platform, with promotional partnerships with Netflix, NBCUniversal, Disney, HBO and MTV.

In February 2016, Whisper announced the launch of the Spanish-language version of its app on both iOS and Android devices, with an initial launch in Mexico. In March, Whisper partnered with the It Gets Better Project in Mexico (Todo Mejora México) on a campaign to empower LGBTQ voices in Mexico.

In June 2016, Whisper announced that they would be introducing video ads, and started on July 3 with a partnership with Universal Studios' to promote the movie The Secret Life of Pets. Whisper said that it would share the most popular posts on its Facebook page, which reportedly reached more than 200 million people.

In June 2016, Whisper also added a "Groups" function, which allows users to curate Whispers under different topics, and to connect with other users who have shared interests.

In February 2017, Whisper announced its partnership with HBO to promote the TV series Big Little Lies, and also embarked on promotional partnerships with Dove soap and Universal Music Group.

According to TechCrunch, as of March 2017, Whisper had a total of 17 billion monthly pageviews on its mobile and desktop websites, social channels and publisher network, with 250 million monthly users across 187 countries.

In March 2017, Whisper launched a video widget that publishers (primarily news websites) could embed within articles to feature contextual Whisper content.

Development of the system was outsourced to Inaka, a web and mobile app development consultancy based in Seattle, Washington and Buenos Aires, Argentina. The original system back end used the Riak NoSQL database, but after performance problems with Riak the system was converted to use MySQL and Apache Cassandra. Since 2013, Whisper has brought its technology team in-house. Whisper had 25 engineers in Venice, California in 2015.

In March 2016, Fast Company reported that Whisper had recently begun to use deep learning to build a content moderation tool, internally dubbed the Arbiter. The article noted that, because Whisper's Arbiter has knowledge to "reflect both the real things that millions of Whisper users have said and how moderators handled them, its understanding of language can be remarkably subtle."

According to the Los Angeles Times, Whisper is also using AI technology to create content. That system, the Times reports, "allows Whisper to gather related posts about issues at work, school or in relationships. Then, it organizes them, adds context and even writes a headline."

Controversy

The Whisper app has been criticized for requiring access to smartphone features such as the camera and the user's contact list, which is disclosed when the app is downloaded on the Android platform.

In May 2015, a 15-year-old girl from Bolton, Massachusetts was charged with making a threat on Whisper towards a school, referencing the Columbine shootings; she was tracked down using Whisper and GPS.

In July 2018, a 31-year-old man from Toronto, Canada allegedly met a 15-year-old girl using Whisper and was charged with luring a child, two counts of sexual assault and other charges, including possession of child pornography.

Privacy policy

The company's privacy policy reveals that it will turn over information in the case of requests from law enforcement in order to comply with applicable laws for enforceable government requests such as a subpoena. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's attorney Hanni Fakhoury commented in early 2014 that while Whisper may have no legal choice in the matter, "it's the doublespeak that's problematic." Fakhoury elaborated that: "You have to be very careful about selling a program as a secure way to secretly communicate, and then reserve the right to turn over that information whenever necessary."

The Guardian allegations

In October 2014, The Guardian newspaper alleged that:

Whisper retains every user's posts indefinitely in a central database (including "deleted" posts), together with each post's timestamp and approximate geolocation, even if the user has opted out of geolocation;