Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg

Satiating the rumor mill, Facebook has officially launched its own version of a secret chat app this week, called Rooms. The anonymous service is a standalone app that gives group creators full control over who can participate and how content is shared. Initially Facebook Rooms is being made available to users in the U.S. and the U.K., along with a handful of other English-speaking countries. But even these first regional users are limited to iPhone owners only, as Facebook Rooms has yet to launch an Android version of the anonymous sharing app.

So while Android users wait their turn for Facebook’s newest app, here are three alternatives to check out:

3 alternatives to Facebook Rooms

Secret

This service is available on the web, for iOS devices and Android. You can use your email address, phone number or Facebook account to create a Secret account. The secrets you share can be seen by your contacts or Facebook friends, but unless you give out any identifiers that can reveal you, they will not be able to know who you are. If a person has only a few contacts or Facebook friends, the secrets shared by the person will not be immediately available to his or her contacts to prevent them from being able to deduce who revealed a certain secret.

.

Yik Yak

This service requires a user to enter his or her phone number to get the latest news, gossip, and updates from the people around them. You can view confessions on the web or by using your iOS or Android phone.

Yik Yak is said to have strong age restriction policies, giving way to some very adult content. If you like a post you can upvote it through the ranks. If not, a down vote will bury it . A user gets Yakarma points for how popular his or her posts are, and also by down voting and upvoting posts. These points are redeemable for little more than Yik Yak bragging rights.

 .

Whisper

Available on iOS and Android, Whisper is quite an interesting platform to share your deepest, darkest secrets. The service does not ask for any identifiers such as your email account, and won’t ask you to connect to Facebook. Instead Whisper uses your device’s unique ID to identify a user, which means you can create multiple accounts in one device. By using the device’s unique ID, the service knows a lot less about the user, which means it is more anonymous compared to similar sharing apps.

You can change your username and password any time you please just by going to the settings section of the app, search by topics but not usernames, send a personal message by just tapping on a Whisper, reply to Whispers, “heart” them, share Whispers, and invite your friends to use the service.  You can make your Whispers standout with photos and quirky fonts.

photo credit: phil dokas via photopin cc