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Sarahah

Sarahah () was a Saudi Arabian social networking service for providing constructive feedback. In Arabic, sarahah means "frankness" or "honesty".

Sarahah allowed people to text messages to others and the person reading that could then reply anonymously. Initially, it was meant for workers to compliment their bosses. Spam was frequent, sent by third-party apps claiming to be able to reveal the usernames of anonymous senders.

History

It was created by Zain-Alabdin Tawfiq at the end of 2016 and reached a sudden worldwide success by mid-2017. This growth is considered to be deeply related with the release of a Snapchat update that allowed people to share URLs on their snaps.

It was released on the US Apple App Store on 13 June 2017, and also had users in several other countries including Canada, India, and Lebanon. An update was released by Snapchat on July 5. Within two weeks, it was at the number 1 position. The rise was also seen in a Google Trends report.

On 26 August 2017, it was reported that the Sarahah mobile app quietly uploads the user's address book to its web servers.

On 12 January 2018, Katrina Collins, after friends of her 13-year-old daughter sent her abusive messages, started a petition to have the app banned. The petition gained nearly 470,000 supporters. Both Apple and Google had removed the app from their stores.

In 2019, Sarahah launched a iOS app called Enoff (pronounced “enough”) which was aimed at employee activism and unfair practices.

On 15 December 2021, Zain-Alabdin Tawfiq announced via Twitter: This was retweeted by Sarahah's Twitter account.

Relaunch as a personality assessment platform

Sarahah relaunched as a Big Five personality assessment platform. The new platform offers a scientifically validated 50-question personality test based on the Big Five model (also known as OCEAN), measuring five core traits: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability, and Openness to Experience.

The platform is available in English and Arabic. Test results include percentile scores compared to population norms, personality summaries, and career recommendations based on trait profiles.

See also

  • Anonymous social media
  • Ask.fm – a service which used to be anonymous, and was linked to several teen suicides in 2013
  • Secret (app) – a similar service which was shut down in 2015

References

External links