Catering to people’s needs of sharing stinging secrets with others, foreign anonymous sharing apps like Secret and Whisper are recording a surge in both growth and media attention. Chinese startup 10years.me also tapped this market, but it approached the demand from a different angle.
10years.me brings “who you want to be in 10 years”- a question we would take little time to think about, at least on regular basis, to our daily life. It enables users to anonymously share their secrets on a more positive and aspiring aspect of life-your future dreams, like plans to learn another language, to pass a certain exam or to study overseas, rather than sharing confessions, rumors, complains and praises as the case of Secret and Whisper.
Users can set up eight future goals or dreams in their homepages which are arranged in timelines. After posting a goal on the site, users can update their progresses and experiences in realizing these dreams, as well as to find friends with similar interests. In addition to posting blogs within the site, users also can save and search links and materials relevant to a certain theme outside the site.
People may be shy away from sharing their hefty goals in social networks that involve close acquaintances, like Sina Weibo and WeChat, for fear of being laughed at if they failed at the goals. At an anonymous platform, users not only can share their dreams, but also find friends with similar interests, said Da Xing, former strategy consultant and current CEO the company.
The target users of 10years.me are mostly college students or young professionals (20-35 years old) who just started to find the right track for their lives. Da disclosed that around 60% of their users are girls aged between 20-29 years old.
In addition to various information about the users’ goals, the platform will be able to collect their specific measures in realizing these goals. 10years.me planned to commercialize the service by providing these data to relevant service providers, according to Da Xing.
Da Xing launched the site in Nov. 2013 together with three close friends from college. 10years.me plans to release iOS version in late May and Android version is also coming soon. Moreover, the team also planned to launch an English version for the site this year.
image credit: 10years.me
Neat idea. I think that putting oneself at risk of public failure is better for pushing oneself… But I could see how others wouldn’t want to do that.