tbh was an

anonymous social media Anonymous social media is a subcategory of social media wherein the main social function is to share and interact around content and information anonymously on mobile and web-based platforms. Another key aspect of anonymous social media is that cont ...

app available in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

, designed for high school students. The app was launched by Nikita Bier, Erik Hazzard, Kyle Zaragoza, and Nicolas Ducdodon in September 2017. Investors included

Greylock Partners Greylock Partners is one of the oldest venture capital firms, founded in 1965, with committed capital of over $3.5 billion under management. The firm focuses on early-stage companies in the consumer, enterprise software and infrastructure as wel ...

Redpoint Ventures Redpoint Ventures is an American venture capital firm focused on investments in seed, early and growth-stage companies. History The firm was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, with offices in San Francisco, Los Angel ...

Founders Fund Founders Fund is a San Francisco-based venture capital firm. Formed in 2005, Founders Fund had more than $11 billion in aggregate capital under management as of 2022. The firm invests across all stages and sectors, including aerospace, artificia ...

Semyon Dukach Semyon Dukach (born 25 October 1968) is a Russian-American entrepreneur and former professional blackjack player. He is the founding partner of One Way Ventures, a venture capital fund that backs immigrant entrepreneurs. He was the managing dir ...

, Bee Partners,

Dorm Room Fund Dorm Room Fund is a $10 million American venture capital firm focused on investments in student-run startups. Established by First Round Capital in 2012, the firm is operated by full-time undergraduate and graduate students. It has backed compani ...

, and American serial entrepreneur and investor

Wayne Chang Wayne Chang (born August 3, 1983) is an American entrepreneur, angel investor, film producer, and philanthropist. He is best known for founding Crashlytics, a startup acquired by Twitter in 2013, creating a filesharing network called i2hub, m ...

. In October 2017, tbh was ranked #1 in the U.S. App Store, and

Meta Platforms Meta Platforms, Inc., (file no. 3835815) doing business as Meta and formerly named Facebook, Inc., and TheFacebook, Inc., is an American multinational technology conglomerate based in Menlo Park, California. The company owns Facebook, Instag ...

(then known as Facebook inc.) subsequently acquired the company for an estimated $100 million. tbh became one of the company's brands, alongside Facebook (app),

WhatsApp WhatsApp (also called WhatsApp Messenger) is an internationally available freeware, cross-platform, centralized instant messaging (IM) and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by American company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook). It allows user ...

Instagram Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. The app allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters and organized by hashtags and geographical tagging. Posts can ...

Messenger ''MESSENGER'' was a NASA robotic space probe that orbited the planet Mercury between 2011 and 2015, studying Mercury's chemical composition, geology, and magnetic field. The name is a backronym for "Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geoch ...

, and

Oculus VR Reality Labs is a business of Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook Inc.) that produces virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) hardware and software, including virtual reality headsets such as Quest, and online platforms such as Horizon W ...

. However, on July 2, 2018, Facebook announced that tbh would be discontinued, due to low usage. In August 2018,

Buzzfeed News ''BuzzFeed News'' is an American news website published by BuzzFeed. It has published a number of high-profile scoops, including the Steele dossier, for which it was heavily criticized, and the FinCEN Files. Since its establishment in 2011, i ...

acquired a confidential memo in which the app's founders explained how they used Instagram to target teenagers at specific schools, playing to their curiosity and timing their messages to take advantage of the end of the school day. In August 2022, tbh was relaunched as

Gas Gas is one of the four fundamental states of matter (the others being solid, liquid, and plasma). A pure gas may be made up of individual atoms (e.g. a noble gas like neon), elemental molecules made from one type of atom (e.g. oxygen), or ...

by co-creator Nikita Bier, with the same concept of being an anonymous social media app, in which high school students give each other compliments; this was acquired by

Discord Discord is a VoIP and instant messaging social platform. Users have the ability to communicate with voice calls, video calls, text messaging, media and files in private chats or as part of communities called "servers".The developer documenta ...

in early 2023.

References

2017 establishments in the United States Internet properties established in 2017 2017 software IOS software Companies based in San Francisco Meta Platforms acquisitions 2017 mergers and acquisitions Internet properties disestablished in 2018 {{Mobile-software-stub

See also

References