Why the Secret London Facebook group is so successful

Tim recently pointed me in the direction of a Facebook group called Secret London. It currently has 188k members. This isn’t entirely surprising until you realise that it was only created 2 weeks ago. The grou is for “… Londoners to inspire Londoners by sharing the secrets of the city”. There’s a very nice London-for-Londoners feel to it. Of course there’s a load of spam but the group’s creator Tiffany Philippou is working hard to keep it clean. Tiffany is now crowdsourcing the development and design of a new site from a temporary blog.

I’ve been thinking about why it has become so successful so quickly, especially considering the enormous glut of travel-related sites that exist. For me there are four things that make it work.

The proposition

Secrets want to be shared, by virtue of the fact that they are not supposed to be. People love to share secrets. We all love to tell others about a great pub with a huge log fire and the best Toad in the Hole in London, the best ice-cream, the best spot in Greenwich park for a drunken lazy Sunday. And even more, we love to share things that say something about who we are.

The convenience of Facebook

People are spending more and more time simply staying within Facebook. And it’s just too easy to share and join groups. It’s becoming a little world of content, like a vortex.

Inspiration

At first thought you assume that Facebook isn’t the ideal platform for Secret London. It would be difficult to archive the secrets and you have to scroll through a lot of crap to find the good stuff. But perhaps that is its charm. When you scroll through the comments and the responses, there’s is a lot of dross but you do come across stuff that inspires you. Most travel sites assume that you have the first clue what you want to do. You have to initiate your discovery by clicking on a primary navigation item or think of a search terms to enter. It’s a tiny but onerous little chore and you don’t know how the site is going to react, it might disappoint. But with a stream of random secrets, it’s like poring through an vintage shop and finding a little gem that you love, but nobody else cares about.

Simply put, it’s not about discovery, it’s about inspiration.

Shared ownership

Finally, Tiffany is crowdsourcing the design and development of a new site as well as a logo. She is also releasing the content under a Creative Commons license. It feels as close as we can currently get to a shared ownership of something.

I’d be fascinated to see what else you think might have contributed to the success of Secret London.

18 comments

Author: Anjali Ramachandran anjali28

I actually don’t like the Facebook group (though I joined it) because I get no value out of it. Wading through the wall is something I don’t have the time nor inclination for. I’m waiting to see what the site looks like when it’s up. She says she’ll finish it within a week. Now that’s agile!

Author: Tom Callard Tom Callard

Thanks for the post- I have also been thinking about why this group has been successful.

It was started as an application to the Saatchi and Saatchi Summer Scholarship- round 1 of which was to create a group and the 50% with the most members would go through. I’ve been administrating a lot of it and the groups which have risen to the top of the pile have all become phenomenally successful due to all containing a real insight about people. There are a lot which lacked creativity too of course, but it is interesting to study why certain ideas catch on. The winner at the moment is a Lego group, promising to personalize lego men with the names of the group members.

I agree with you that the medium of Facebook is partly responsible for the popularity, but I also think it is the internet in general, which rewards generosity and being an active member of a community. The “Web as a random act of kindness” argument of Zittrain (http://ow.ly/15oGk ) seems to be borne out by groups like Secret London. Your social standing online is not about looks or money or social skills even, but by how generously you contribute to a community. The most successful online platforms will often then recognise this and reward you for it- with “power” status in forums, or badges on Foursquare.

http://ow.ly/15oGk

This need to be a valued community member is so strong that people will give up their privacy, via location based apps, and even their cherished secrets (which, presumably, they enjoyed partly because they were undiscovered and empty) though this group.


Anyway- We hope Tiffany continues with her project as it seems to really have struck a chord with a lot of people.

Author: mike mike

Thanks for the comment Tom. I think you’re absolutely right about the insight. Have you seen the ‘I flip the pillow over to the cold side’ group? It currently has over 900k members, the same conversations are played out again and again, it’s incredible and it’s entirely based on a very quirky little insight about human nature.

Author: Daniel Daniel

I don’t think the group has been any more successful than any other FB group out there: people just seem to want to join groups for the sake of it, powered by little more than boredom (ref. ‘I flip the pillow over to the cold side’): it seems this isn’t about people clubbing together and discussing brilliant London secrets, it’s about people adding yet more stuff to their FB profile and killing time.

It will be very interesting to see what happens to the organisation. If I were to take a cynical guess, the crowd-sourced identity will look dreadful (they always do); the website will be rushed and not very well considered; the original, and most contributing members will feel frustrated that the secret group is not in fact secret anymore; these guys will leave the site to find another medium to discuss good places in London and the site will then be overrun by spammers.

I really hope this doesn’t happen, not least because it will give some proof of concept credence to a new app I’m in the middle of planning…!

Author: mike mike

Hi Daniel, I’d certainly agree that Facebook users are fairly indiscriminate in joining groups and the like, but over 800k in two weeks is pretty special.

Author: Daniel Daniel

Yes that is, and I certainly won’t belittle that achievement. But after I wrote that comment I realised that I actually joined the group because a few of my friends had, looked at it once, saw the mess of comments/posts and haven’t been back nor have I ‘unjoined’ the group. So really what does that 800k really mean… sort of like what does Twitter’s “200 million” accounts mean when “1%” (made-up figures!) of users actually engage, use, and respond to it…

Author: Mike Arauz Mike Arauz

One of the things that I love about this is how subjective it is. I actually want subjectivity when I’m seeking advice about a new city I’m traveling to. I can judge for myself whether I would agree with this person or not. But, it’s nice to have a strong personal opinion along with recommendations.

Author: Simon I'Anson simonianson

Success seems to have bred success in this instance. The Facebook start and ensuing publicity has really helped their other activities. 4500+ Twitter followers in just over 2 weeks as well at over 300 designs submitted for the crowdsourced logo. With such a fast and frantic start it will be interesting to see how / if the pace is maintained.

Author: mike mike

Absolutely, it’s amazing how good we have become at judging others given only a profile picture and a short description.

Author: Adam Abu-Nab Adam Abu-Nab

Agreed, too much noise for now. A problem it’ll always have.

Why?

You’ll only want the highlights and nothing can be built which supports the communal buzzing up of secret locations >> as they inevitably have to be unearthed by a fair number of people in the Facebook group. Not too much secrecy then and unless the community decides what’s good then I don’t see the difference between SL and the Londonist or LDN Interesting (who must be kicking themselves that they didn’t have the word “secret’ in their copy to virally hit Facebook newsfeeds).

Editors should pick some suggestions up for nomination. The most ‘liked” of these suggestions in the Facebook group are then picked for editorial or a monthly newsletter. They would need to be given some time so those who have visited can validate their awesomenimity. I doubt many people would bother so it all again comes back to having an editorial structure and not a crowdsource. That is unless the thing can completely exist away from Facebook.

Author: mike mike

Adam, your comment raises something really interesting, which is that most sites offer ‘most popular’ or ‘trending’ topics but actually, going back to what Mike Arauz said below, actually some people really want what is of interest TO US, not TO EVERYONE. And that’s kind of the beauty of this, the secrets are massively varied, and you pick out what you like, or actually, it jumps out at you. I think that many people like to have stuff dished up on a plate and some people like to discover things for themselves. This group makes it a bit easier to find these things for yourself, without some kind of arbiter of taste controlling what you see.

Author: Adam Abu-Nab Adam Abu-Nab

Hopefully Tiffany finds a solution that offers both of us something Mike – lovely idea that I still think needs both intense categorisation for the people looking for the “jump outs” and buzzing up within those categories for those who don’t want minute by minute randomness.

Author: James Thorley James Thorley

Whilst I agree that a large amount of ‘secrets’ with no tags or search facility does have a certain random charm to it, I also think that it’s too frustrating to be of use in the long-term. If the two things can be combined, then it could grow into something really useful that can rival the likes of Timeout, Run-Riot etc.

Also, the fact that it currently exists on Facebook means that when you post a ‘secret’, your name and profile pic are included. So it instantly feels like more of a personal exchange of information, as opposed to a more traditional ‘Submitted by J. Smith, London’ style.

Author: Urchin Urchin

I love Secret London. It’s great to get this kind of insider information, the stuff the guide books leave out or ignore. It’s no surprise that it grew so quickly when you consider how many people live in London. I live in Amsterdam and am delighted to see someone has set up a Secret Amsterdam group on Facebook that has 600 members after a few days. They claim it’s the real dope on Amsterdam and as an English guy that has lived in the city of sin for 8 years, I have to say I have discovered a couple of great places I never new existed by reading Secret Amsterdam’s wall. Some of the other ‘Secret City’ groups, though, don’t cut it at all.

Author: Sheri Brissenden Sheri Brissenden

I think you’re absolutely right with your comments about wading through a lot of data. I’ve found a great site called http://www.MYFJ.com – if Facebook is about friends and LINKEDIN is about career, MYFJ is about the things you love. Because it’s organised around people choosing one of nine colours, you can easily find what other people like in your category. Fab site.

http://www.MYFJ.com