> Without ever having officially launched, co-founder and CEO Or Arbel managed to secure $1.2 million in funding from a list of unnamed investors, except for co-founder, angel, and Mobli CEO Moshe Hogeg, who participated in the round.<p>Stuff like that really gets me. I see tons of start-ups that would have a fighting chance given that sort of investment and then lame stuff like this gets funding. Of course they're entirely free to spend their money any way they want, but was there really no place to spend that better?<p>Congratulations to the Yo team for furthering the research to the origins of the term 'dumb money'.<p>I guess if you timed it right you could use Yo to communicate in Morse, but that seems to be a waste of bits considering that each packet will activate a very large number of bits being sent where one would suffice.
I just...what? I don't understand.<p>It's basically begging for you to switch apps after you get the "Yo" push notification. I can't really imagine a conversation which goes like this:<p>Me: Yo<p>Them: Yo<p>Me: Yo<p>Them: Yo<p>...<p>What I can imagine is getting a Yo from someone, switching apps, and being like "what's up? [p.s. dont fucking Yo me anymore. Just message me using a real app.]".<p>That "wut" app is similar in that you can't have a real conversation with anyone in particular, but it can at least be used for sharing secrets or something. I guess. Yo doesn't have such a use case that I can see.<p>They could maybe pivot it to act like tinder where if both of the parties yo eachother then it goes to a separate section of the app where they can actually IM eachother. But...idk. That doesn't seem particularly interesting/differentiating either.<p>I must be naive/short sighted.
I'm actually kind of surprised at the large numbers of HNers running to defend this thing, and those that expressed the equally valid opinion that this app is garbage have been downvoted into oblivion.<p>In this thread I've seen lines like:
"Filling a communication niche",
"It reduces that friction of opening your SMS app and typing 'Yo'"<p>What a surreal thread. It literally could have come straight from a script from HBO's 'Silicon Valley'.
I'm not what's more disturbing. The fact that it secured 1.2M or the mental gymnastics that people are doing to justify the existence of this app.
It's Facebook's "poke" feature (which I honestly love) in 2014. There's nothing wrong with it, but I struggle to find anything novel about it.
The onboarding process was really jarring. I expected to be able to use it instantly. Instead, I had to wait ~30 seconds while my username was registered, and now I'm sitting on my hands waiting for some SMS with a code that will allow me to login. Also, there's no easy way for me to use the app with other people without inviting them first (which, given my circle of friends and family, would have to be preceded by a sales pitch on why they should download this stupid thing in the first place).<p>As an app that prioritizes ease-of-use and fast communication, Yo really falls flat on it's face.<p>I'm not going to comment on the potential usefulness of this app, because I'm sure others will and I don't think it'll yield any particularly interesting discussion. References will be made to Snapchat and WhatsApp, the word "bubble" might come up, etc.
One of the author's jibes at Facebook is that it "causes depression among its users".<p>But what about TechCrunch itself? I would bet money that there's a correlation between TC readership and depression. Reading about pointless apps is a waste of anyone's time and will make you feel worse in the long run.
Technology has a tendency to distill everything to its essence. This is just another step towards a world in which the number one film in the country is called "Ass" [1].<p>I'm 50/50 on this happening within a decade.<p>[1] <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy</a>
New startup idea: an app that only lets you say "hey" to people. It's called Navi.<p>I can't wait until the hackathons where everyone makes Yo clones unironically. It's going to create an innovation black hole.
Excerpt:<p><i>“It’s really lightweight,” said Arbel. “You don’t have anything to open. The Yo is everything, it’s all there is. You don’t have a badge you need to remove or any hidden content. Just a Yo.”</i><p>Words fail me.
Ridiculous as this sounds, there's a very interesting conversation happening on Twitter with Marc Andreessen about this apps' uses.<p>Apparently, the "missed call" phenomenon, where people will call someone else and hang up, is incredibly popular, especially in other countries (e.g. Bangladesh). It's a free way to communicate 1 bit of information, which in many cases is enough if the people know beforehand what they want to communicate. E.g., "come downstairs", "call me back on another line", etc.<p>I think one article mentioned that missed calls are <i>70%</i> of the traffic of cellular operators in Bangladesh!
In Europe and a lot of developing countries, where missed calls aren't charged for - this kind of 'nudge' communication is pretty common. I have no idea if it'll work in the US but it's certainly valuable when both parties already have known context, e.g. 'I'll missed call you when I'm outside'
Please, please, <i>please</i> somebody buy this company for $10 million. This is the best chance in human history to bring Poe's Law to its absurdist conclusion.
What sparked my interest is that indeed there seem to be some words that are like a swiss army knife in possibilities. Yo is a prime example. It can mean hi, okay, no thanks, what's that, hey, a warning and the list goes on forever.<p>Trying the app it said to me that I could connect to Facebook through my settings. The app didn't have settings.<p><i>sad trombone</i><p>Don't snort the 1.2 million at once, yo.
By far, this is the dumbest article I came across. Couldn't read it after first few lines. But god! This was huge article on an app that sends two words! :D Hah! Although comments on the article tickled me a bit.