It only took 8 hours to build the app, and the only thing it does is allow you to send the word ‘Yo’ to your friends. To many, it seems like a joke. But its inventor, Or Arbel, is totally serious.
Arbel, who built the app three months ago, has quit his job and moved halfway around the world — from his native Israel to San Francisco — to work on Yo full time. He’s opening an office, hiring staff and seeking “strategic partners.” And oh yeah: He’s already raised $1 million from investors.
So is Arbel right? Is Yo, which he calls “context-based communications,” the future of messaging? Or is investor interest in Yo an unmistakable sign that we are in the midst of another internet bubble?
Yo is a very simple app. It allows you to send a push notification to anyone else with the app. All of those notifications say the same thing: “Yo.” Arbel says that “you usually understand what the Yo means based on who you get it from and when you get it.” According to Arbel, once you start using Yo “the way it affects your life is profound.” He noted that many of the reviews of Yo in the app store say things like “Yo changed my life.”
Some of these reviews, however, do seem a bit sarcastic: “Not just a means of simple but effective communication, Yo is a way of life,” one review says. “Since downloading Yo, all my relationships have improved and I’ve regrown most of my hair.”
Yo was launched in the App Store on April Fool’s Day of this year. (It was initially rejected by Apple because they thought the App wasn’t finished yet.) It took off when tech evangelist Robert Scoble called it “the stupidest but most addicting app ever.” Thus far, it has attracted over 50,000 users who have sent about 4 million Yos. It’s particularly popular among other start-ups like Kickstarter and Four Square. Once it gets into an office, Arbel says, “it goes viral.”
Why not just send the word “Yo” using an existing messaging app? Arbel says the primary benefit is efficiency. With WhatsApp, an extremely popular messaging app that allows you to send words of your choosing, it takes 11 taps to send a Yo. With the Yo app, it only takes two taps.
The comparison to WhatsApp also may point to Arbel’s larger strategy. In February, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion, even though the company’s revenue is negligible. Arbel says that anyone who uses WhatsApp will also want Yo. If Arbel can grow Yo into something a larger company believes is even 1 percent as valuable as WhatsApp, that’s still $190 million.
Some analysts believe the WhatsApp sale and the flood of venture capital seeking out the next big thing represents a new tech bubble. Hedge fund manager David Einhorn, speaking to the Los Angeles Times recently, said “[t]here is a clear consensus that we are witnessing our second tech bubble in 15 years. What is uncertain is how much further the bubble can expand, and what might pop it.”
June 20, 2014 6:40 AM
