Privacy-oriented messaging service Wickr is adding a new way for people to share photos with a group of friends, including an option to stealthily share photos on Facebook.
Wickr Lets Users Hide Photos on Facebook Inside Cute Kitty Pics
With the new feature, the privacy-oriented messaging service is tip-toeing into social media.
Asa Mathat
Known as Wickr Timed Feed, the service lets users share photos with up to 151 friends, with the feed living for up to 24 hours before disappearing. The photo streams appear in a new tab within Wickr’s iOS app. But perhaps the most interesting part of WTF is the option to share the photos via Facebook.
What gets posted to Facebook is a cute photo of a kitty cat. However, those who are also Wickr users can click on the photo. Assuming that the first person has chosen to share the photo with them, a click will take them to the actual photo within the Wickr app.
Wickr has been working on the feature for nearly a year.
“It took a lot longer to build this than we expected. However, this is a true technology breakthrough,” CEO Nico Sell told Re/code.
For Wickr, it’s a way to tiptoe into social media while still maintaining its privacy-oriented approach. Until now, Wickr’s service has consisted largely of one-to-one and small-group chat, with photos and messages self-destructing shortly after being read.
Still unclear is what Facebook will think of Wickr’s use of decoy images. “It will be interesting to see how they respond,” Sell said.
Wickr is starting with cats, as furry felines represent a significant portion of all pictures on the Internet.
“You want to hide secrets in something that’s very common,” Sell said. “We will have dogs, too, but we plan on that being an in-app purchase.”
Here’s a video that Wickr did showing WTF in action:
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
