Whisper (app)
Developer(s) | WhisperText LLC |
---|---|
Initial release | March 31, 2012 |
Stable release | ) |
Operating system | Android, iOS |
Type | Social Networking |
License | Proprietary |
Website | whisper |
Whisper is a proprietary iOS and Android mobile app available without charge, which says that it allows users to send messages anonymously, and to receive replies.[3][4] Users post messages, known as "whispers," which are displayed as text superimposed over an image automatically retrieved from Whisper's own search engine or uploaded by the user.[5][6][7] The app, launched in March 2012, is the main product of the media company WhisperText LLC, which was co-founded by CEO Michael Heyward and Brad Brooks, who is the CEO of mobile messaging service TigerText. According to Adweek, as of November 2016, Whisper has over 30 million monthly active users, with 17 billion whispers being seen each month by 250 million people across Whisper's app, mobile and desktop websites, social channels and publisher network.[8]
Features
Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic describes the service as follows:
Anyone can post an anonymous message to the service in the form of an image macro: text overlaid on a picture. When you open the app, you see six such images. Each one has a "secret" on it. You can respond to a message publicly or privately, choosing a public anonymous post or a private pseudonymous chat. Users don't have a public identity in the app. While they do have persistent handles, there's no way to contact them except *through* the messages they post.[9]
User base
In April 2015, Whisper reached 10 million monthly active users.[10] Stories about the app have appeared in Forbes,[4] USA Today,[11] The Washington Post,[12] and Huffington Post,[13] and Heyward was featured on Forbes' Top 30 under 30 in Technology list in January 2014.[14] In early November 2013, Whisper was reported to have reached 2.5 billion monthly page views and nearly 3 billion page views in December 2013.[15] Whisper has 10 billion monthly page views as of Spring 2015.[10] In December 2015, it was reported that Whisper had reached 20 million active users, double the number of users it had six months earlier.[16][17] In April 2016, it was reported that Whisper had reached over 30 million monthly active users.[18][19] In terms of demographics, The New York Times named Whisper in September 2015 as a social media platform of choice for Generation Z in an article about Internet habits among Generation Z and Millennials.[20]
Concept
The app purports to promote online anonymity, and the developer claims this will prevent and combat cyberbullying.[21]
In October 2015, Whisper announced a partnership with the Ad Council on the "I Am A Witness" anti-bullying campaign, along with other tech companies, including Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat,[22] and in March 2016, Whisper announced a partnership with the Anti-Defamation League's Best Practices for Responding to Online Hate.[23] The service's anonymity is claimed to have fostered a support network where concern and care among users has developed: according to Mashable, "The team regularly hears from users that the network's community has helped them stop self-harming behaviors."[24] Another premise behind the service was to counter the "best possible self" ego-driven self-aggrandizing "vanity" posting done on Facebook, and as an antidote to the phenomenon of "oversharing" and "too much information" that young users engage in online.[25] Business Insider, Forbes, and The Daily Dot have called it "the anti-Facebook,"[4][26][27] and Forbes Tech drew a contrast in stating that, "Whisper, even more than Snapchat, is the anti-Facebook."[4] The digital-news website SMU SMC summed up all these points together: "In addition to preventing cyber bullies, Whisper gives users the opportunity to confess to things that could potentially ruin marriages, friendships or result in loss of job, without suffering consequences. You can over share without any repercussions."[28]
Whisper has also been used as a platform for citizen journalism. In June 2014, amid widespread violence and unrest in Iraq and the Iraqi government's blocking of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, many Iraqis downloaded and used Whisper as a means of acting as real-time reporters, posting news and updates hours before the mainstream media, as well as sharing political views and personal thoughts and feelings.[29][30]
Technology
Development of the system was outsourced to Inaka,[31] a web and mobile app development consultancy based in Seattle, Washington and Buenos Aires, Argentina.[32] The original system back end used the Riak NoSQL database, but after performance problems with Riak the system was converted to use MySQL[33] and Apache Cassandra.[34] Since 2013, Whisper has brought its technology team in-house. Whisper now has 25 engineers in Venice, CA.[35]
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 stated that the Arbiter runs on a PC with 128GB of RAM and four Nvidia GeForce Titan X graphics cards, each of which has a graphics processing unit with 3072 computing cores and 12GB of RAM. Those GPUs enable it to perform artificial intelligence and use neural network technology to assess incoming whispers. 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."[36]
Corporate
The company, WhisperText LLC, is led by CEO Michael Heyward.[37] The company is based out of the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles, California and has offices in New York City as well.[38][8]
WhisperText LLC received its first round of venture-capital funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners for $3 million in April 2013,[39] and then a second round of funding from Sequoia Capital, Trinity Capital, Krum Capital, and Lightspeed for $21 million in September 2013.[40] PitchBook, an independent private equity and venture capital research firm, forecasted in November 2013 that Whisper is one of the likeliest social platform IPOs, with a pre-money valuation of $85 million.[41] According to Om Malik, Founder and Senior Writer of GigaOM, Whisper was already, as of July 2013, valued at $100 million.[37] In May 2014, Whisper confirmed that it raised an additional $36 million in venture funding from Shasta Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Thrive Capital, and Lightspeed Ventures.[42] Whisper has raised $61 million in total venture capital funding.[43]
Whisper has experimented with advertising by working with Fox Studios, MTV, Universal, Hulu and FX on customized branded campaigns.[44][45][46] In September 2015, Adweek revealed that Coca-Cola was using Whisper to market its #makeithappy anti cyber-bullying campaign to Whisper's users.[47] In late 2015, Whisper embarked on an advertising partnership with Disney and Pixar, starting with the promotion of the 3D animated movie The Good Dinosaur.[48] In February 2016, Mashable and Teen Vogue announced that Whisper had partnered with Giphy to allow GIFs in the chat section of its platform.[49][50] In April 2016, the app launched Whisper Polls, whereby brands can question potential consumers, the users, about various types of opinions, preferences, and interests. The app is also planning to start interacting directly with users through a "cards" feature, prompting users to post about specific topics.[18][19] On April 13, 2016, Whisper was featured in a discussion on The Howard Stern Show, where Howard and co-host Robin talked about confessions from men who were victims of domestic violence at the hands of their own wives.[51]
In February 2016, Whisper also announced the launch of the Spanish-language version of its app on both iOS and Android devices, with an initial launch in Mexico,[52] and in March, Whisper partnered with the It Gets Better Project in Mexico (Todo Mejora México) on a campaign to empower LGBTQ voices in Mexico.[53]
In June 2016, Whisper announced that they will 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 will share the most popular posts on its Facebook page, which reportedly reaches more than 200 million people.[54]
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.[55]
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.[56][self-published source?]
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.[57]
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.[58] 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 [sic] the right to turn over that information whenever necessary."[59]
The Guardian allegations
In October 2014, The Guardian newspaper alleged that:[60][61]
- 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;
- Whisper allegedly stores or processes user information outside the United States despite having told its users that "we process and store all information in the United States". Whisper has said that while it does use an outsourcing firm for content moderation based in the Philippines, no data is stored outside the US.[62]
- Whisper allegedly provides data it gathers (including geolocation data) to the FBI, and MI5. Whisper participated in a DOD project about suicide prevention by sharing aggregate mentions of certain words on military bases.[63]
Whisper disputed nearly all the Guardian allegations[64] and made a point-by-point response to the Guardian.[65] After reading Whisper's response, Twitter’s former security head Moxie Marlinspike commented on Hacker News that Whisper "should never have claimed to provide anonymity if it had to track users to make the app function".[66] He pointed out that there are many "hard problems" that need to be solved before a service can claim to provide truly unlinkable anonymity, and that "there are projects like Tor that are approaching these types of problems seriously, but apps like Whisper or Secret end up poisoning the well and confusing users".[66] According to Marlinspike, Whisper was claiming that they could not track their users, when instead they were "squarely in the [would not] category".[66]
On October 23, 2014, U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller asked Whisper's CEO to appear before him and the staff of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation to explain Whisper's tracking systems, tracking data retention, and data distribution. Buzzfeed, the Huffington Post and Fusion (TV channel) suspended their partnerships with Whisper.[67][68]
In March 2015, The Guardian published a clarification of the October 2014 piece in which it had made numerous allegations about Whisper's privacy protection and metadata policy.[69] The Guardian clarified the claims regarding user location, data storage, changes to Whisper's terms of service and security policy and the sharing of user data with the US Department of Defense. It also removed an opinion piece titled "Think you can Whisper privately? Think again."[70] The retraction was covered by several news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal,[71] CNN Money,[72] TechCrunch,[73] and Mashable.[74]
Xipiter report
On March 22, 2015, a security startup called Xipiter published a report in which they outlined serious security concerns and the resistance they met when trying to bring these concerns to the attention of Whisper.sh. They claimed that they could hijack a users' account, post (publicly or privately) as a hijacked user, and view all of a user's current and past private messages.[75] In response, Whisper's co-founder Michael Heyward and its CTO Chad DePue claimed that it is not possible to do such things with their app and accused Xipiter of fabricating their proof of concept video.[76] Xipiter's claims have yet to be validated or disproved by independent security researchers.[76]
Your Voice
Whisper Text LLC claims to have set up a companion nonprofit for its users called Your Voice, which, according to its web site, is "dedicated to raising awareness about mental health issues on college campuses". The site claims to provide resources and support for college students dealing with depression, anxiety, eating disorders, sexuality and LGBTQ issues, bullying, suicide prevention, and stress management.[77] The web site provides links to various services run by other organizations, but offers no services of its own. The contact telephone number on the web site to call for help is the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.[78]
See also
- Anonymous social media
- PostSecret
- Secret (app)
- The Guardian Project (software)
- Tor (anonymity network)
References
- ^ WhisperText LLC (February 11, 2016). "Whisper". Google Play. Google. Retrieved February 16, 2016.
- ^ WhisperText LLC (February 5, 2016). "Whisper". App Store. Apple. Retrieved February 16, 2016.
- ^ Lawler, Ryan (May 16, 2013). "Now With More Than 1.5B Page Views A Month, Secret Sharing App Whisper Launches On Android". TechCrunch. San Francisco, California. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
- ^ Gannes, Liz (September 5, 2013). "Why Should You Care About Whisper, the Secret-Sharing App That VCs Are Pouring Money Into?". All Things D. San Francisco, California. Retrieved December 28, 2013.
- ^ "Creating a Whisper for iPhone". Whisper Customer Portal. Los Angeles, CA. January 7, 2016. Retrieved April 3, 2016.
- ^ "Creating a Whisper for Android". Whisper Customer Portal. Los Angeles, CA. January 7, 2016. Retrieved April 3, 2016.
- ^ a b Swant, Marty (November 6, 2016). "Whisper Is Growing Its Audience and Ad Business, but Challenges Loom". Adweek. New York, NY. Retrieved November 16, 2016.
- ^ Madrigal, Alexis C. (August 16, 2013). "The Genius of Whisper, the Massively Popular App You Haven't Heard Of". The Atlantic. Washington, D.C. Retrieved December 29, 2013.
- ^ a b Shontell, Alyson (May 4, 2015). "After Passing 10 Million Monthly Active Users, Whisper Hires Its First President". TechCrunch. Retrieved April 29, 2015.
- ^ Reimold, Dan (March 22, 2013). "Students 'Whisper' secrets on popular mobile app". USA Today. Tysons Corner, Virginia. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
- ^ Tsukayama, Hayley (May 25, 2013). "Whisper lets you anonymously share your deepest secrets". The Washington Post. Washington, D.C. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
- ^ "Secret Lives Of College Students: Anonymous Posts Shared By Whisper Users". Huffington Post. New York, New York. August 23, 2012. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
- ^ Bertoni, Steven; et al. (January 6, 2013). "Forbes' Top 30 under 30 in Technology". Forbes. New York, New York. Retrieved January 6, 2013.
- ^ Shontell, Alyson (December 16, 2013). "Secret-Sharing App Whisper Is Nearing 3 Billion Monthly Pageviews Because It Does Something Facebook Can't". Business Insider. New York, New York. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
- ^ O'Brien, Sara Ashley (December 11, 2015). "20 million people are sharing secrets on this app". CNN Money. New York, NY. Retrieved January 3, 2016.
- ^ Flynn, Kerry (December 11, 2015). "Whisper App Hits 20 Million Monthly Users, Doubles Over Six Months In 2015". International Business Times. New York, NY. Retrieved January 3, 2016.
- ^ a b Heine, Christopher (April 13, 2015). "Whisper's New Polling Feature Helps Brands Learn From Unusually Candid Millennials". Adweek. New York, NY. Retrieved April 14, 2016.
- ^ Williams, Alex (September 18, 2015). "Move Over, Millennials, Here Comes Generation Z". The New York Times. New York, NY. Retrieved March 18, 2016.
- ^ Collier Cool, Lisa (September 4, 2013). "The Technology That Increases the Risk of Cyberbullying". Yahoo Health. Sunnyvale, CA. Retrieved December 29, 2013.
- ^ "Ad Council, Leading Digital Media Companies,Corporate and Non-Profit Partners and Social Influencers Empower Teens with "I Am A Witness"". Ad Council - Press Release. New York, NY. October 22, 2015. Retrieved March 18, 2016.
- ^ "At SXSW, ADL Calls on Newer Social Media Channels to Join Effort with Industry Leaders to Combat Cyberhate". Anti-Defamation League - Press Release. New York, NY. March 10, 2016. Retrieved March 18, 2016.
- ^ Fox, Zoe (October 31, 2013). "Is Anonymous Social Media the Answer to Cyberbullying?". Mashable. Palo Alto, CA. Retrieved December 29, 2013.
- ^ Gannes, Liz (August 2, 2013). "I'm So Over Oversharing: On Making Our Digital Lives More Real". All Things D. San Francisco, CA. Retrieved December 29, 2013.
- ^ Knibbs, Kate (December 17, 2013). "What you need to know about Whisper, the Snapchat for your secrets". The Daily Dot. Retrieved December 29, 2013.
- ^ Dickey, Megan Rose (September 5, 2013). "VCs Bet $21 Million That You'll Want To Start Sharing Stuff Online Anonymously". Business Insider. New York, NY. Retrieved December 29, 2013.
- ^ Farrell, Mackenzie (November 1, 2013). "Whisper App: Anonymity Prevention of Cyber Bullying". SMU SMC. New York, NY. Retrieved December 29, 2013.
- ^ "Frightened Iraqis take to anonymous app". CNN. Washington D.C. June 16, 2014. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
- ^ Rusch, Michael (June 16, 2014). "Iraqis Take To Whisper After Government Blocks Most Social Networks". BuzzFeed. New York. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
- ^ "Inaka - What We do: Whisper". Inaka. Retrieved August 19, 2014.
- ^ "Inaka Founder Talks Argentina, Agile and Lean". Boundary. Retrieved January 16, 2014.
- ^ "Case Study: Inaka deploys Boundary to monitor its Amazon Cloud and Storm On Demand servers". Boundary.
- ^ "The story of Whisper - How the largest anonymous social network in the iTunes app store was built in Erlang". Erlang Solutions.
- ^ "The state of Silicon Beach and tech in Los Angeles (#AT30)". Southern California Public Radio. May 28, 2015. Retrieved October 18, 2015.
- ^ McCracken, Harry (March 25, 2016). "Whisper's Master Of Content Moderation Is A Machine". Fast Company. New York, NY. Retrieved April 3, 2016.
- ^ a b Malik, Om (July 31, 2013). "Rumor Says: Whisper, the anonymity mobile service raising big money, valued at $100M". GigaOM. San Francisco, California. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
- ^ Stone, Madeline (April 3, 2014). "Whisper Is Supposedly Moving Into Anjelica Huston's $11 Million Venice 'Fortress'". Business Insider. New York, New York. Retrieved September 21, 2015.
- ^ Griffith, Erin (April 4, 2013). "Lightspeed invests $3 million in Whisper, the "secrets" app with Snapchat-like adoption". PandoDaily. San Francisco. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
- ^ Lawler, Ryan (September 4, 2013). "Secret-Sharing App Whisper Snags $21 Million From Sequoia, Adds Roelof Botha To Its Board". TechCrunch. San Francisco, CA. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
- ^ Lawler, Ryan (May 19, 2014). "Whisper Confirms $36M In New Funding, Adds Related Posts, Categories, And Explore Feature To App". TechCrunch. San Francisco, California. Retrieved September 21, 2015.
- ^ "Whisper company profile". CrunchBase. San Francisco, California. May 19, 2014. Retrieved September 21, 2015.
- ^ Heine, Christopher (September 14, 2015). "Here's How Social App Whisper Has Quietly Become a Marketing Force". Adweek. New York, New York. Retrieved September 21, 2015.
- ^ Dave, Paresh (April 30, 2015). "Whisper, app with 10 million young users, attracting advertisers". Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, California. Retrieved September 21, 2015.
- ^ Jarvey, Natalie (September 1, 2015). "Whisper Hires Entertainment Veteran to Lead Sales Efforts (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter. Los Angeles, California. Retrieved September 21, 2015.
- ^ Heine, Christopher (September 3, 2015). "Coke Tests Whisper's Advertising Potential in the Most Perfect Way". Adweek. New York, New York. Retrieved September 21, 2015.
- ^ Johnson, Lauren (December 4, 2015). "Hollywood Is Getting Stealthier at Advertising With Mobile Messaging Apps: Disney/Pixar's Whisper campaign shows potential". Adweek. New York, NY. Retrieved January 3, 2016.
- ^ Bell, Karissa (March 7, 2016). "Whisper hops on the GIF train with Giphy partnership". Mashable. Palo Alto, CA. Retrieved April 3, 2016.
- ^ Dwyer, Kate (March 9, 2016). "Psst…Whisper Has a Major Update Announcement". Teen Vogue. New York, NY. Retrieved April 3, 2016.
- ^ The Howard Stern Show (April 13, 2016). "Howard Stern Show April 13, 2016 - FULL (@4:02:25)". New York, NY. Retrieved April 16, 2016.
- ^ Chávez, Gabriela (March 9, 2016). "Whisper llega a México para ayudar contra el bullying (Whisper comes to Mexico to help fight bullying)". CNN Expansión. Colonia Lomas Altas, Mexico. Retrieved April 3, 2016.
- ^ Medina, Daniela (April 3, 2016). "Whisper + Todo Mejora: Una app de anónimos al servicio de la comunidad (An anonymous app serving the community)". SinEmbargoMX. Mexico. Retrieved April 3, 2016.
- ^ Flynn, Kerry (June 27, 2016). "Whisper App To Introduce Video Ads With 'The Secret Life of Pets' As Launch Partner". International Business Times. New York, New York. Retrieved July 8, 2015.
- ^ Dwyer, Kate (June 2, 2016). "Whisper Just Made a Major Change - Groups are a new way to connect". Teen Vogue. New York, New York. Retrieved November 22, 2016.
- ^ Brooks, Clark. "Whisper: Are You Really Anonymous?". Illinois: Photo News.
- ^ http://www.wcvb.com/news/police-teenage-girl-made-columbine-threat-to-school/33276352 Teenage Girl Makes Columbine Threat to School
- ^ "Whisper Privacy Policy". Whisper. Los Angeles, CA. October 13, 2014. Retrieved November 2, 2014.
- ^ Greenberg, Andy (May 14, 2014). "Whistleblowers Beware: Apps Like Whisper and Secret Will Rat You Out". Wired. Condé Nast. Retrieved February 16, 2016.
- ^ Paul Lewis. "Revealed: how Whisper app tracks 'anonymous' users". the Guardian. Retrieved April 24, 2016.
- ^ Paul Lewis. "Whisper: the facts". the Guardian. Retrieved April 24, 2016.
- ^ Paul Lewis. "Whisper app has published its new terms of service and privacy policy". the Guardian. Retrieved April 24, 2016.
- ^ Hill, Kashmir (October 30, 2014). "This Is The Suicide Info Whisper Gave To The Department Of Defense". Forbes. New York, NY. Retrieved November 2, 2014.
- ^ Heyward, Michael (October 18, 2014). "What Whisper Is All About". Medium. Los Angeles, CA. Retrieved October 25, 2014.
- ^ Heyward, Michael (October 24, 2013). "Setting The Record Straight" (PDF). AmazonAWS. Los Angeles, CA. Retrieved October 25, 2013.
- ^ a b c Hern, Alex (October 17, 2014). "Twitter's former security head condemns Whisper's privacy flaws". The Guardian. Retrieved February 16, 2016.
- ^ Rockefeller, Jay (October 22, 2014). "Letter from Sen. Rockefeller to Whisper CEO". United States Senate, Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 6, 2014.
- ^ Lewis, Paul; Rushe, Dominic (October 23, 2014). "Top senator demands explanation from Whisper after user tracking revelations". The Guardian (Manchester, England).
Buzzfeed, the Huffington Post and Fusion have suspended their pre-existing partnerships with Whisper in the wake of the Guardian's revelations.
{{cite news}}
: Unknown parameter|lastauthoramp=
ignored (|name-list-style=
suggested) (help) - ^ "Corrections and clarifications: Whisper – a clarification". The Guardian. London, UK. March 11, 2015. Retrieved March 16, 2015.
- ^ Bright, Peter (March 11, 2015). "Guardian backtracks, says Whisper doesn't spy on its users after all". Ars Technica. New York, NY. Retrieved March 16, 2015.
- ^ Dwoskin, Elizabeth (March 11, 2015). "Guardian Backpedals on Whisper App Privacy Violations". The Wall Street Journal. New York, NY. Retrieved March 16, 2015.
- ^ Kludt, Tom (March 12, 2015). "Guardian issues 'clarification' on Whisper bombshells". CNN Money. New York, NY. Retrieved March 16, 2015.
- ^ Ha, Anthony (March 11, 2015). "The Guardian Publishes A Pretty Amazing Whisper "Clarification"". TechCrunch. San Francisco, CA. Retrieved March 16, 2015.
- ^ Bell, Karissa (March 11, 2015). "The Guardian backtracks privacy allegations against Whisper". Mashable. New York, NY. Retrieved March 16, 2015.
- ^ ""A confederacy of 'privacy' dunces": What we found under the hood of an 'anonymous' chat app used by millions". Xipiter. March 22, 2015. Retrieved March 24, 2015.
- ^ a b Julie Bort (March 23, 2015). "Inside the 'bizarre' public fight anonymous app Whisper is having with a security startup". Business Insider. Retrieved March 24, 2015.
- ^ "About Us". Your Voice. Los Angeles, CA. Retrieved December 29, 2013.
- ^ "Your Voice". Whisper Text LLC. Retrieved January 16, 2014.
External links
- 2012 establishments in California
- Android (operating system) software
- Companies based in Los Angeles
- Internet companies of the United States
- Internet properties established in 2012
- IOS software
- Mobile social software
- Mobile software
- Online companies
- Social networking services
- Social networking websites
- Proprietary cross-platform software