Yo Raises $1.5M In Funding At A $10M Valuation
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Get to someone's house and want them to let you in? Send a yo.
Getting to be lunchtime? Yo your coworkers (Yo widgets on Android mean you can just go across a row and yo each one super easily) and meet up at the usual spot.
Want to meet up with a mentor? Yo them when you get in; if they yo you back they're probably free, head over and talk to them.
Thinking about your girlfriend? Send her a yo to let her know you care.
I really like using Yo; the interface is really clean and it's really fast to get to my yoscreen on Android.
The people hating on Yo just don't understand the way that technology is moving towards ephemerality. There's an art to Yo. It's elegant and simple and beautiful and it's probably worth much more than $10M. Yo has the capacity to change the way humans interact with each other.
Now I'm not knocking Yo, clearly they're doing something umm.. Right? I don't know. But this is getting ridiculous.
Meanwhile, I've sent my Yo. I'm with my friends yoing it up. Maybe we're at a bar or maybe we're at a girl's place at a kick-ass party. But we're there because we yo'd at the door to get her to let us up. You're not even in yet. What even is your life?
I get that tech people are crotchety about new tech, but come on. Get with the program. Join the party. Just yo. http://justyo.co.
Snapchat wasn't a success because people had been yearning for self-deleting photo messaging or because people found it too complicated to send photo messages with other apps. It was a success because it gave people social permission to send low-pressure, low-expectation photo messages to their friends. Someone who sends a photo of their lunch via Facebook messenger or as an email attachment runs the risk of being seen as silly, superficial or self-involved. Doing the same thing via Snapchat is totally expected, socially-valid and safe behavior, because the medium of Snapchat provides implicit permission to send those types of messages: it's only around for a few seconds, so who cares if it's a bit trivial or silly?
The medium of Yo provides the same kind of implicit validation. You don't have to worry about seeming blunt or disturbing someone or failing to consider the other person's needs, because the format itself makes catering to those worries impossible. So the unique feature of the app isn't the functionality it provides but the narrow and unequivocal use of that functionality that it mandates.
The trend of communication is towards the shortest, least-demanding formats possible. The first big blogging sites were popular not just because they were easier to use than hand-written HTML or complex CMS's, but because they validated personal blogging as a format. Facebook made "blogging" even more personal, trivial and self-focused. Twitter then made communication even less demanding by establishing a format in which it is impossible to create serious and thoughtful content, thus removing the pressure to do so. Snapchat made messaging even more ephemeral and low-pressure. And now Yo removes even the expectation of taking a picture that's funny or interesting, even for just a few seconds.
It seems like what people want are formats that allow them to connect with others and express themselves while simultaneously removing as much pressure to perform or possibility of critique as possible.
Applying that logic, what are some things a lot of people would like to do, but can't due to social stigma? And could also be remedied by an app that doesn't allow you to do anything but that thing. Such as send superficial pictures (snapchat) or contentless messages (Yo).
People experiencing difficulty raising funds whilst trying to solve actual problems and make a profit in doing so have my sympathy.
> Yo has the capacity to change the way humans interact with each other.
You could easily put this into the script for a Silicon Valley episode to good effect.
Will other startups follow and copy Yo? Of course - if this laptop I'm on wasn't such a piece of crap I would be working on my yo clone right now. Does this mean Yo represents something profound? No, just that people smell easy money, and can find utility in silly, banal apps.
[edited because ranting intensified]
Sounds like you've got a bad case of the sour grapes, friend. It's not too late though, the Yo API is really slick and there's a lot of potential for interop there. I'm working on a few Yo-related projects right now.
> I really like using Yo; the interface is really clean
> and it's really fast to get to my yoscreen on Android.
But if you have something that people like, and it has the added benefit of shining a light on interrelationships between people (only useful if people like using it) then it can be really valuable "Gee Bob sends alice a Yo every day at lunch time, perhaps he is the guy that decides where they eat lunch, and if we get Bob to choose our client's restaurant we'll get Alice for 'free'." Why are companies that all they do is host a 1x1 transparent GIF image and collect sequences of web pages visited by an IP address valuable?
To collect data about people you have to tie into something they do, if they don't do what ever the 'carrier' activity is, you collect no data. Yo's value is that people like to use it.
Aren't most startups?
Hi / Yes / No
That is really all the functionality this provides.
Which is a million dollar idea for reasons.