‘TBH’ To Be Honest and Facebook – The Acquisition

TBH is short for To Be Honest – a new app released by it’s developers Midnight Labs in Oakland. TBH was released to help people feel good and after initially launching in a school in Georgia, it spread like wild fire and was in thousands of schools within 3 days. The App has had over 5 million downloads in the couple of months it has been available.

TBH is an anonymous polling app that allows people to post questions and have them answered anonymously. The difference with TBH though is that the answers are all positive and you don’t actually get to write them. This removes the cyberbullying element that has dogged apps such as Sarahah – check out our UK & Ireland’s founder Wayne’s post about Sarahah – and whilst the developers of Sarahah will always say it was never designed for cyberbullying, it doesn’t take a genius to see how it would be twisted and used for cyberbullying, just like every other anonymous chat app has been.

It seems the internet is ready for some positivity because the rate at which this specific app has grown is incredible. With over 5 million downloads in 2 months and a continuing upward trend, it’s easy to see why a company like Facebook was interested in acquiring such an app.

Cyberbullying and Facebook

Whilst there is talk of teens leaving the Facebook platform, the statistics would seem to suggest otherwise. With well over 1 billion users on the platform and the fact that it’s also the destination that cyberbullying or trolling is likely to take place. They are under pressure to address the issue.

Facebook have made improvements to combat cyberbullying and continue to do so.  The acquisition of tbh is another positive step in the fight against negative online use. The main difference with this acquisition over IG and Whatsapp being that the previous owners of tbh will actually become Facebook employees. They will have Facebook emails whereas Instagram and Whatsapp have remained completely separate, maintaining their own buildings and email identities. Many said they didn’t want a giant like Facebook to take over the app because that would take away from the appeal.

Coming under the Facebook banner though means that it gets access to Facebook’s massive resources but can carry along the path it was going. The app is only 3 months old and has big plans ahead. Not least of which is to get the iOs version 100% and then build the Android version. At the moment the app is only available in specific states in the US and only on iOS. With Facebook’s support, expect to see this app now explode onto every teen’s smart device worldwide.

“If you’re not on the TBH app, god you’re sad and old.”
— BuzzFeed