The accidental genius of Yo

Back when Yo was initially on the hype curve we created a clone for Switzerland called Hoi (a Swiss German way to say Hi) for a joke - link to some press we got below - one of the guys in the picture wasn’t even really involved we just included him and called him CEO to add to the craziness. Technically we had pretty good native iOS and Android apps, backend running on Parse.com (RIP). We got about 10K downloads until Yo actually tried to come after us via the iOS App Store with a vague claim of copying. We defended it OK, no lawyers required but it seemed kinda uncool. We even got our photos in Schweizer Illustriete, which is a dumb magazine featuring Swiss stars - it was the summer media hole so they were desperate. We also ended up adding features Yo didn’t have like sending a photo with your “Hoi” ... took less than 1 week until random strangers were sending naked parts of their body - freaked me out that anyone would trust a random app with their privacy...<p>Then the hype blew over, Parse shut down and we lost interest until I actually met the Yo CEO at a mobile event in Berlin, and after initially accosting him we ended up taking a selfie together and made up.<p>Anyway just a random anecdote of developers with too much time on their hands.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;amp&#x2F;s&#x2F;www.spiegel.de&#x2F;netzwelt&#x2F;apps&#x2F;app-hoi-schweizer-klonen-die-anstupps-app-yo-a-982582-amp.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;amp&#x2F;s&#x2F;www.spiegel.de&#x2F;netzwelt&#x2F;apps&#x2F;ap...</a>

The article repeatedly makes the mistaken assertion that sending a &#x27;Yo&#x27; constitutes 1 bit of information transmitted. This is mistaken as the information also holds temporal information, which is actually what is very useful. It&#x27;s not a Yo at some random point, it&#x27;s a Yo now. It&#x27;s really encoding &quot;now!&quot;. Still not very much information but a ton more than 1 bit, its a timestamps worth in fact...<p>&#x2F;pedant

Years ago, I hooked up my apartment buzzer to Yo with a raspberry pi. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;sambostock&#x2F;yoorbell" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;sambostock&#x2F;yoorbell</a> It was super insecure, but if you yo&#x27;d it, it would let you in, and if someone buzzed the buzzer, it would yo me. Exactly as much info as needed.

I noticed the gradual reduction of message length too when Yo came out (email -&gt; tweet -&gt; yo), and wondered what it would mean to transmit less than a single bit of information.<p>I came to the conclusion that it would be a messaging system, somewhat like yo where sometimes it would send a notification even when I hadn&#x27;t told it to. If you configured it so it sent an extra notification randomly for every notification you sent, then you&#x27;re conveying approximately half a bit of information.<p>Strangely enough, I think this could be quite useful, as a way of initiating conversations with people you would otherwise lose contact with.

Years ago calling and immediately hanging up was immensely popular among teenagers&#x2F;young adults as a way to ping someone. Used as a way of flirting, telling something was ready, arrived at home.

My shortcut to text my partner is called “Yo” and sends a “Yo”. Use it all the time. She knows when I’m leaving a store, or swinging by the house to pick her up, or when we’re in a store and ready to meet at the checkout lanes.<p>I think frequently that the app could’ve survived and have been useful. The iterations they went through took it in less useful directions, but the idea itself didn’t need to die. Feels like a lost opportunity.

This reminds me of feature I liked about Google&#x27;s Duo app (like Facetime): send a heart.<p>It&#x27;s pretty clear what the heart means in the context of a video call app: &quot;I am currently thinking about you and wouldn&#x27;t mind a video call, if you want to.&quot; It solves the problem of instant-anxiety of getting an impromptu video call when you weren&#x27;t expecting one.<p>Unfortunately now you can send one of 10 different emoji instead of just the heart, complicating the feature unnecessarily by adding more bits.

Anyone heard about the re-tooling of Yo by the Israeli Missle Notification Service?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;technology-28247504" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bbc.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;technology-28247504</a>

Ah, Yo hackathon was my first hackathon event after I graduated from a bootcamp 6 years ago. That was fun.<p>This brings back memories.

So what happened to the $1.2 million?

Tangential, but I would be curious to know if &quot;capiche&quot; refers to the Italian &quot;capisci?&quot;, which is Neapolitan dialect meaning &quot;do you understand?&quot;.

Does the app still exist?

There&#x27;s got to be a similar market for &quot;push notification as a service&quot;. I wouldn&#x27;t mind giving a company $20 for credits for 500 push notifications. I hit their API, they push to my phone with whatever text I give them.

Lol I remember playing with it, it was fun! There was also a similar app where you sended beer!<p>Actually those genius level applications are not really innovative as people were spamming pokes on Facebook far before their advent

Why does it say &quot;accidental&quot; genius? Did the creator not create the app on purpose to be a &quot;ping&quot; for humans?

Is there an alternative yo app that automatically send yo on your fb messenger friend?

so it&#x27;s &quot;poke&quot; without facebook

This article is like four years late.