‘Facebook comes with mobile app for anonymous use’

Facebook is developing an app that allows use under a pseudonym, reports the New York Times. The social networking service has been working on the app for anonymous use for a year and will release it within a few weeks.

The New York Times does not report many details about the app. The newspaper received information about the app’s existence from sources within Facebook. The app would be developed by Josh Miller, who joined Facebook as part of an acquisition of Branche, a company that developed services to initiate small discussion groups on the Internet.

It is unclear whether it is a standalone app or an app that enables partial or complete interaction with Facebook itself. It is also unclear whether, for example, anonymous exchange of photos or other content will be possible. In recent years, anonymous messaging services such as Secret and Whisper have flourished. However, a distinctive feature of Facebook is that members use their real name: this principle allows the company to build profiles that are of interest to advertisers.

Recently, Facebook hinted that it was working on ways to use pseudonyms, but that mainly involved transvestites and other people who for certain reasons don’t want to use their real names.