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Comment by sql12345 | Hacker News Reader

As a college student, the old Yik Yak will be missed. I wish they would just change it back to what it originally was; it was very entertaining and useful that way. It's a testament to the dark side of VC's influence that this company was forced to kill their app in an ill-advised pivot just because the current model wasn't monetizing quickly enough.

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I wouldn't at all blame the VC's for this. Yak killed their own app overnight by taking the main feature that made it popular - the fact that it was anonymous - and making an about-face to suddenly require usernames (and strongly encourage social media integration). The fact that they thought that was a good idea in the first place, along with the fact that they didn't think that maybe they should A B test the change in a smaller market first, clearly demonstrates to me that the founders didn't know what they were doing and didn't have what it would have taken to be successful.

Before they shot themselves in the foot, they had a huge following among college students because the app was one of the best ways to get and share info on campus. You can't tell me that couldn't have been monetized. Hell, Durex could have made millions by offering $.50 off coupons on the app every night!

It's not that it couldn't have made money, the founders just didn't seem to have a realistic vision for how they were going to do so.

> require usernames (and strongly encourage social media integration)

very possible that they thought it would be nearly impossible to monetize anonymous users

> the fact that they didn't think that maybe they should A B test the change in a smaller market first, clearly demonstrates to me that the founders didn't know what they were doing

Absolutely right. It's just like digg v4.

> Yak killed their own app overnight by taking the main feature that made it popular - the fact that it was anonymous - and making an about-face to suddenly require usernames

Wasn't anonymous harassment a rampant problem?

Well, they blocked the app on all US middle- and high-school campuses so it couldn't be used for bullying. But past that I wouldn't call it a rampant problem. If anything the anonymous factor prevented harassment within the app, because between posts you couldn't identify anyone, thus no one could really carry grudges or become "popular."

The main problems were the occasional bomb threat and the overall degenerate nature of some of the posts.

Bullying is a weird word for "harassment".

> If anything the anonymous factor prevented harassment within the app, because between posts you couldn't identify anyone, thus no one could really carry grudges or become "popular."

But you can say, "Jennie Ginger is a slut", and positively identify a real person in real life. Or you could just spout racist epithets.

I'm not sure why I'm positing hypotheticals, when harassment was an actual, ongoing problem:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/09/technology/popular-yik-ya...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/yik-yak-harassment_us_56...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/10...

http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/07/technology/yik-yak-universit... - sorry, auto-playing video (fuck you, CNN).

This article is weird; I can't tell if it's blaming the victims, or the colleges, or the institution of college altogether: http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2015/10/yik_yak...

Are there new apps in the space Yik Yak used to occupy? I would have imagined that void would have been quickly filled by a newcomer.

In parts of Europe Jodel[1] is pretty popular.

[1] https://www.jodel-app.com

There's Whisper: http://whisper.sh/

Judging from the website that looks like buzzword trash and the worst blog spam ("21 pet death which makes you love", "These 17 twins have dating problems ... here is why")

I built this: https://dropanon.com. Not the same but similar

How do you plan on curbing harassment? I think, after Twitter, it's just plain irresponsible to not have some kind of plan for that.

Honestly, I never thought that far ahead. The whole thing started as an experiment: "can I get something on the AppStore". I had/have no plans beyond that.

Not an insurmountable issue. The community resolves the problem by tagging the offending items much like you stick a lollipop stick in dog turd at the park. Sometimes your kid still gets shit on her shoe but then you scan the items before they are dropped, keywords, whatevs. You could reduce the problem to vanishingly small.

It got filled by Facebook.

fb isn't anonymous

We've thrown our hat into the ring: https://www.swiflie.com

Pollen Chat has been around for an Year. For Android only, as of now. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=in.raynstudios...

I am the creator of the app.

As another user posted I would say the university Facebook meme pages have filled the void left by Yik Yak: inside jokes for people in your school. It's not anonymous, but the general use case and type of content is very similar.

I have made Hoodchat live just today https://hoodchat.io

Not an app, but a browser extension that adds an anonymous posting board to your facebook news feed. Currently debating on weather to make it local (you only see posts from people in your immediate friend group) or to keep it global (anyone with the plugin can see all the posts). Check it out my early version at http://switchfeed.net

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