whisper
Anonymous social apps face another reckoning as UNC System to ban Yik Yik, Fizz, Sidechat & Whisper
Anonymous social apps are in for a reckoning. Yes, again. This week, University of North Carolina (UNC) System President Peter Hans announced a plan to block the use of popular…
OpenAI launched a slew of new APIs during its first-ever developer day. DALL-E 3, OpenAI’s text-to-image model, is now available via an API after first coming to ChatGPT and Bing…
OpenAI open-sources Whisper, a multilingual speech recognition system
Speech recognition remains a challenging problem in AI and machine learning. In a step toward solving it, OpenAI today open-sourced Whisper, an automatic speech recognition system that the company claims…
Whisper announces $35M Series B to change hearing aids with AI and subscription model
A few years ago, Whisper president and co-founder Andrew Song was talking to his grandfather about his hearing aids. Even though he spent thousands of dollars on a medical device…
MediaLab acquires messaging app Kik, expanding its app portfolio
Popular messaging app Kik is, indeed, “here to stay” following an acquisition by the Los Angeles-based multimedia holding company, MediaLab. It echoes the same message from Kik’s chief executive Tim…
Trill Project aims to be a safe community for people to express their true selves
Trill Project, founded by three high school girls, recently launched out of private beta to help people safely express themselves online. For those unfamiliar with the word “trill,” it’s a…
Every board member of anonymous app Whisper has reportedly stepped down
Remember Whisper, the anonymous chat app? It’s been a while since we’ve heard much from the company, but it’s still around and has recently lost a bunch of high-profile board…
Anonymous app Whisper lays off 20% of staff to survive
Startups are dying all over the place as last year’s investment cool-off leads many to run out of cash. But Whisper refuses to race into the graveyard like fellow anonymous…
Whisper launches new tool to automate article creation from its user-generated content
After months spent watching other anonymous messaging and sharing apps come and go, Whisper is coming back to the market with a new product, a massive readership and a reinvigorated…
No Signal: Egypt blocks the encrypted messaging app as it continues its cyber crackdown
Egypt has intensified its cyber crackdown under president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. In recent years authorities have blocked Facebook’s controversial Free Basics program for not allowing it to spy on users,…
Signal app-maker rebuts criticism of dev direction by calling for more community help
Moxie Marlinspike, founder of Open Whisper Systems (OWS), the not-for-profit software group behind the respected Signal Protocol crypto (and the eponymous Signal secure messaging app) has responded to criticism of…
Meet The Startups Vying For The Crunchie For Fastest Rising Startup Of 2015
The 9th Annual Crunchies are almost upon us. On February 8, people from some of the best and brightest startups around will descend upon San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House…
After Passing 10 Million Monthly Active Users, Whisper Hires Its First President
Whisper announced today that it hired Mark Troughton to be its president. Troughton was the president of Green Dot, which specializes in prepaid debit cards and went public in July…
The Guardian Publishes A Pretty Amazing Whisper “Clarification”
The Guardian, the British newspaper that published a series of articles last fall (starting with this one) about anonymous social media app Whisper, issued a “clarification” today about those stories.…
Secret Co-Founder Chrys Bader-Wechseler Steps Down Because It’s Not About Design Anymore
One year after founding anonymish app Secret with fellow Googler David Byttow, Chrys Bader-Wechseler is leaving the company on amicable terms. He cites that Secret isn’t about design and curation…
Few Winners In Anonymous Social Networking, And Secret’s Not One Of Them
Is anonymous social networking a flash-in-pan trend? A winner-take-all category? Which of the anonymous social networking apps around today are still thriving, and which are practically dead? These questions come…
Whisper Suspends Editorial Team Involved In Guardian Visit
Anonymous messaging app Whisper has suspended its editor-in-chief Neetzan Zimmerman and other staff members after Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller wrote a letter summoning Whisper execs to an in-person…
Whisper Denies Tracking User Info And Sharing It With The U.S. Government
Anonymous social media app Whisper might be tracking the location of users via GPS or IP address on their smartphones and then handing that info over to the U.S. Department…
Whisper’s Nonprofit Your Voice Is Now A Digital Platform To Discuss Depression Openly
In the wake of all the discussion about depression and suicide this past week, Whisper founders Michael Heyward and Brad Brooks announced they are starting a $1 million endowment for…
Whisper Confirms $36M In New Funding, Adds Related Posts, Categories, And Explore Feature To App
Anonymous social sharing startup Whisper has confirmed a new round of funding and is launching an updated version of its app that will make it easier for users to connect…
Whisper CEO Michael Heyward Defends Gwyneth Paltrow Post
It’s not easy being interviewed by Michael Arrington. Over the last several years, we’ve seen our share of VCs, entrepreneurs, and big tech execs wilt under the pressure. But not…
Together with co-founder Brad Brooks, Michael Heyward created Whisper, an app for iOS and Android that lets users anonymously share their thoughts and feelings with the world around them. We’re…
Secret and Whisper have hit a dubious benchmark of success. Both have been cloned by developers in China. Secret posted about its Chinese duplicate this weekend, while Tech In Asia…
With last week’s episode focusing on Whisper, we thought it only fair to take a hard look at its biggest competitor, Secret. Welcome to another episode of Fly or Die.
You have exactly four days, depending on how much sleep you require, to apply to the TechCrunch startup Pitch-Offs happening in Boston and Los Angeles on April 8 and April…
Anonymity is all the rage these days, and so we bring our attention to Whisper. This week, we’re joined by Leena Rao, who has some mixed feelings about the craze…
Yik Yak Is An Anonymous Messaging App Aimed At College Campuses
What happens when you combine anonymous messaging with college campuses? You get 100,000 users in three months. Yik Yak knows all about it.
Secret-Sharing App Whisper Adds Search And Topics To Find Other Users Like You
Whisper, the secret sharing startup backed by Sequoia and others, has just pushed a new version of its app into the app store that’s designed to help users search and…
Secret-Sharing App Whisper Snags $21 Million From Sequoia, Adds Roelof Botha To Its Board
Secret-sharing app Whisper has closed a new round of funding, bringing in $21 million at a $75 to $100 million-post money valuation. The round, as originally reported by Om Malik,…
A Whisper Is A Stronger Social Signal Than A Public Shout
Yesterday was a surprisingly interesting news day, given how close we are to celebrating the holidays. Facebook struck while the iron was hot and released a brand new standalone iOS…
