SXSW: Frank Warren, Post Secret Founder

March 10th, 2008 | by Brad King |

Frank Warren is the man behind the Post Secret website, an ongoing project that invites people to anonymously send in secrets. It started out as an art project, but quickly turned into one of the most intense Internet phenomenons.

The community is rabid, but not in the flame war way. Instead, this is a group of people who share the most intimate details of their lives with strangers.

Today is his keynote.

  • 200,000 emails throughout the course of the project
  • The secrets come in on a variety of items: parking tickets, report cards, rubix cube (6 secrets), wedding announcements, Starbucks cup, sonograms
  • He carries around a small box of his favorite secrets
  • “the most trusted stranger in America”
  • “Sometimes when we think we’re keeping a secret, that secret is keeping us.”;
    “It shows how all of us have, in one heroic moment, to change our lives.”
  • Post Secrets start: 3,000 post cards, blank on one side with instructions on what the secrets should be. Passed them out to strangers on the street in Washington, DC at night.
  • $60 exhibit space with Artomatic. As the cards came in, he posted them on the wall. After a month, he had about 90 cards.
  • “I thought I was finished with the project, but the project wasn’t finished with me.”; homemade post cards were arriving from everywhere. They kept coming.
  • He has refused to monetize the blog.
  • Harper Collins contacted him to create a book project with the secrets, so he scanned a bunch of secrets and took them to the publisher
  • “I think some people are mailing in secrets to search for grace. Or to apologize to someone.”
  • It’s an interesting mix of the philosophy of connecting with other people, even strangers, and secrets. It’s getting a little dusty at times.
  • “Virtual communities make a difference in the real world every day.”; the PS community raised $30,000 in a week to fund a national suicide hotline facing closure
  • “All of us have a secret that would break your heart if you knew what it was. If we could remember that, there would be more understanding, compassion and peace in the world.”
  • Four Post Secret books.
  • Contrasting the difference between courage and art, and tracing their similarities in what they can do for people
  • My old boss, Jason, from Technology Review believes the secrets are mostly lies. I think I’ve known too many people to believe they are lies.
  • One of the participants just asked his girlfriend marry him, and after a long walk to the front, she said yes.

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