Inventory Yik Yak growth for Facebook second hair history

Hunting Cloud: Creating a 400 million dollar value application in just one year? It's not going to sound like the two brothers at the University of Georgia who have no connection to Silicon Valley have done it! But the app has been a big hit and a lot of trouble, so how did the founders recover the reputation of their apps? How did they succeed? Let me show you the story.

Last March, an application called Yik Yak was suddenly popular in Atlanta's high school Woodward Academy in Elizabeth Long. Most of the students had heard of the application at the first class of the day, and by the time the school had had to issue a notice: Anyone caught playing Yik Yak on a mobile phone would be suspended immediately. Why is there such a ban? Because too many students are using the app to bully their classmates anonymously.

At the end of the day, long estimated that her classmates combined to write at least thousands of yak messages, which were posted on public information walls that could be seen within 1.5 miles of the range.

A few months before the incident, long had been hospitalized after a suicide attempt. The 17-Year-old girl was distracted by reading comments about her depression in yak, and the symptoms of depression were exacerbated.

"The first thing I read was, ' Elizabeth long, stop bragging about how she almost killed herself," said Long in an interview. "If she really wants to kill herself, she should shut up and really do it." ’”

The incident in Woodward Academy has become increasingly uncommon for Yik Yak and its founder Tyler Droll and Stephen "Brooks" Buffington. Yik Yak seems to have mastered the skills of high school and even college students, usually in a day can be popular in the campus. Students like the application because it gives users the opportunity to freely express their views on the state of society. But the anonymity mechanism has also inspired the most vicious and vicious side, and the poor control of young people generally in Yik Yak to this point.

In Alabama, a terrorist threat was released anonymously by Yik Yak, who allegedly shot students at school. Three schools in that area were forced to strengthen security measures. In Massachusetts, Yik Yak the threat of a bomb attack forced a high school to evacuate its students two times.

After hearing the disturbing story of long, droll and Buffington realized that their application faced a serious problem.

"We received a lot of feedback from our parent and student teachers, and then we realized that if we wanted to provide a sustainable public platform, we wouldn't tolerate a gossip site like this now." Droll commented, "The gossip platform may be hot for a while, but one day it will decline." ”

The start-up was successful at a tongue-tied. Yik Yak has just been set up around 1.5, but more than 1600 colleges are active users of this application. A few months after the release of the product, Yik Yak's download volume reached 100,000. Today there are millions of active users each month. In the December, Sequoia Capital, to the Yik Yak to provide 62 million U.S. dollars for investment and financing opportunities, and Yik Yak this round of valuations has exceeded 400 million U.S. dollars.

The anonymity mechanism and the characteristics of the hyper-localized information reception have Yik Yak, but if the founders don't look carefully at how to curb the lawless rhetoric of management users, these features could also ruin the company. If creating a business worth 400 million dollars in 1.5 is not a giddy story, let me say one more thing: Droll and Buffington were sued by a fellow fraternity at the university, claiming that he was the founder of the third partnership for the application.

"This is a large-scale social experiment in general and I have no idea what the end result would be," an early-riser investor commented. ”

This is not another Zuckerberg story.

Atlanta Industry Tavern sporting event bar an unremarkable ordinary evening, two young men of very similar looks sat down on a table in the back corner. Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington are 24 years old (droll one months older than the other), with almost the same height and blue eyes. The two were similarly dressed, disorderly but fashionable, with short, crisp hair.

"I had my hair cut this morning, but Tyler hasn't commented yet!" Buffington said as he sat in his chair.

The founders of the two Yik Yak wore red on the day of the meeting, and I asked them if they even had a wardrobe match. "Well, that's awkward, actually. Droll looked down at his clothes and muttered a word.

We had a round of beer and had some pizza and cornflakes. Then we started talking about what happened in the year and how they were before the venture. With every sip of wine, someone will pass by and greet droll or Buffington. The founders are not so famous, but they are locals-never leaving their home high school athletes and class stars, but their role also happens to include the founder of 400 million of dollars in business. Someone came up and patted droll on the shoulder, droll later said he knew the man from junior high.

The founders are refreshing because they are not typical Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, and none of their friends work in the tech industry. Droll, the two people who know more about science and technology, didn't begin to learn programming until they went to college. Two of people who were meeting me were tempted to cross my shoulder to watch the tennis game on the back of the TV (droll played tennis in high school and college).

Buffington and Droll are both co-founder and roommate of the partnership. They shared a three-bedroom apartment with another college friend and walked to their office every day for 10 minutes. They also put a marker pen next to the bathroom mirror so they can swap their teeth for Yik Yak business ideas in the morning.

"They're not just another mark Zuckerberg," Yik Yak investor Kevin Colleran commented (Colleran is one of the first 10 employees Zuckerberg on Facebook), "They love socializing, people are fun, Also like to party, but you can see that they are very understanding of college life, and deeply understand the needs of students. ”

The younger of the two was droll, who was born in the suburbs of Georgia, but lived in Argentina in his childhood. Droll's father worked for the financial sector at Bell South Analysys, whose mother was a housewife. The family moved back to Georgia at the age of seven, where he began to study in public schools.

On the other, a sister had a pair of twin sister Buffington, and coincidentally spent his childhood in Argentina. His father worked for the Coca-Cola Company, first moved to Mexico, then Stockholm, and finally Atlanta, so Buffington finished high school in Atlanta.

Both were students of the University of Furman (University). Fuhrman University has 2,700 students, located in the Greenville town of South Carolina State. The reason Buffinton chose Furman instead of Washington and Lee was that he loved the school's 750-acre sprawling campus. On the droll side, Furman was able to offer him a chance to practice tennis and study pre-med.

Droll's father has always supported his son leaving medical school to concentrate on Yik Yak decisions. He sent this to droll, and now this picture hangs in Yik Yak's office.
Droll's father has always supported his son leaving medical school to concentrate on Yik Yak decisions. He sent this to droll, and now this picture hangs in Yik Yak's office.

"Everyone said I: ' Your science grades are so good, you should be a doctor." "Droll recalls. The year he first went to college, he was still looking for a second major to learn, and finally he decided to try his first computer science class. "I like to solve puzzles," Droll said (he used to give his university newspaper a helping hand with crossword puzzles), "computer programming is the process of solving puzzles." ”

In that class, droll met his younger classmates Dougie Warstler. The two members of the Kappa Alpha Brotherhood, who had been sworn together, met Buffington, who were already members of the Brotherhood. Warstler chose Buffington as his "eldest brother"-the mentor and friend of the Brotherhood.

Now, Warstler is suing Buffington and droll for millions of dollars, claiming to be the third party founder of Yik Yak. Warstler refused to communicate with journalists through lawyers and media websites, but we could see the story in the open trial record.

Be sued by an early college friend

"We started to do some programming together," droll, recalling his relationship with Warstler, "The game we were playing was just the level of classroom practice." ”

Fry Cook was unsuccessful, but the two had been working together since then and Buffington joined. Three people went on to do an application, is called Dicho the fast voting software, Dicho is the dichotomy is the second Division method abbreviation. Users can create or answer questions like, "who plays basketball better, Jordan or LeBron?" They also set up the Locus Engineering Limited Liability Enterprise in 2012 June for this application. According to the final prosecution document, they all agreed to divide the shares by an average of three.

Yik Yak's founders didn't buy the first table for the new office after their parents ' home Office.
Yik Yak's founders didn't buy the first table for the new office after their parents ' home Office.

That autumn, droll and Buffington are the last year of university, Warstler still a year, they were in the campus to promote Dicho, send a matching small gift, also accepted the local media interview. But even after a year of hard work, the app ended up not being able to fire. Buffington and Droll said Dicho's download volume is about 1000. "Everyone likes the app," they said, "but it's not going to get to the bottom of the popular campus." ”

Warstler went back to Furman in the fall of that year to finish his last year of college. Droll was admitted to the medical School of USC Greenville, but he chose to drop out and continue to develop and apply Buffington. The two men moved home, and then only met at the Panera Bread restaurant in the middle of two small towns, writing programs to try out a new plan.

"We thought of something that was almost bizarre," Buffington said, "and then droll and I conceived the Yik Yak, and then we said, ' That's a good idea. Let's do it!

Now the Yik Yak allows users to read anonymous comments or publish anonymous messages within a 1.5-mile range of acceptance, like a local public Information bar full of flyers. But initially, the two men conceived a smaller range of distances, about 25 feet. In this case, only people in the same classroom or in the same building can read the news.

In the October of 2013, Droll and Buffington co-founded a prototype application, so they took the cell phone to the football field to test for the range-limited message-Sending settings. Droll stood at the end of the pitch, Buffington on the other. One of them sent a text message to another person and shouted, "Did you get it?" If the other person receives it, they will step back and test the message range again.

"We're obsessed with tweaking the precision of this application to perfection," Buffington said, "And I don't know why we did it." I think our general idea is that if I send out a message in the library, ' Hey, did you guys hear that potato chips are so loud? ' That's when people who eat at a restaurant get this kind of information. ”

After completing the distance test, droll told us that the first edition of Yik Yak only took him one weeks. This application is the most basic platform, users can post some local browsing information. Unlike many other applications today, Yik Yak does not approve or disapprove, and does not allow users to see where other people post information.

The time used to name the application is longer than the time it was established. Buffington and droll are always tempted to use the name "chatter". They want a name that reflects the atmosphere of the movie theater, when the lights are about to dim before the film starts, and the viewer whispers.

Finally, Droll's mother in Google synonym search to see the Coasters band 1958 years of popular songs Yakety Yak, and then came up with "Yik Yak" the name.

In the weeks prior to the release of Yik Yak, the Founders modified the Locus Engineering Company's share agreement. The revised agreement states that each founder owns only 5% per cent of the applications they make, combined with a share of 15% per cent of the application. The remaining 85% per cent will be split by other partners in the Locus project based on their respective contributions to the application.

2013 November 6, Yik Yak was released at the App Store. The application was instantly popular, in part because the founders lied to their friends.

The two men made up such a lie that Yik Yak was founded on the request of Harvard students. They want to receive honest feedback about the application from family and friends. Influenced by the movie "Social Network," they set their imaginary clients into Ivy League school students.

In the first week, Furman more than half of the students had already downloaded Yik Yak. This is more than Dicho a year's download volume. "We were thinking: ' If we can do that in a school like Furman, then other schools should be fine. ' ' said Buffington.

Buffington and droll are in their headquarters in Atlanta. Yik Yak will move to a bigger office in a few months.
Buffington and droll are in their headquarters in Atlanta. Yik Yak will move to a bigger office in a few months.

Nearby Wofford University, which has 1200 students, is the second school to start popular Yik Yak. Buffington sent a message to a friend and said how popular the application was in Furman. Within a few days, Yik Yak occupied the Wofford campus.

The partnership between Droll, Buffington and Warstler broke down during the Christmas holiday. On the December 21 of 2013, Buffington claimed he had sent a text message to Warstler to buy his shares in Yik Yak.

"Droll and I were talking about Yik Yak, and then we were wondering if you'd mind if we bought that part of your application?" In the Warstler prosecution case, Buffington's message was released, "We two hope to continue working on Yik Yak with our own strength." If you are not willing to take out all of your shares, then we can also spend less money to buy some of your shares. ”

"We never meant to ruin you," he said. According to the case records, Buffington told Warstler a few days later.

On December 28, 2013, Droll wrote an e-mail to Warstler and told him he had to leave the company. Warstler said he rejected the request and then reiterated his desire to make a meaningful contribution to Yik Yak.

At the time of January 5, Buffington and droll had done all the paperwork to dissolve the locus project and set up a new company share for Yik Yak. January 6, 2014, Droll will write an e-mail notice Wasrtler said he was not in the company.

In the case record, part of this email is quoted:

"We think the most reasonable act now is to dissolve locus." Buffington and I shared all the intellectual property rights of Yik Yak, Locus Engineering Company did not participate in the project. ”

In 2014 of November, Warstler hired Lee Tran & Liang, representing Reggie Brown to sue his fraternity members Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy's same law firm. Like Warstler, Brown had previously sued his former friends for the creation of Snapchat software, and in the end he had received a considerable amount of compensation in the settlement.

The Yik Yak lawsuit continues.

First semester

Droll and Buffington are playing at their headquarters in Atlanta's Yik Yak.
Droll and Buffington are playing at their headquarters in Atlanta's Yik Yak.

After Warstler was forced to quit, droll and Buffington began concentrating on the expansion in the early 2014. They drafted an interesting and vivid strategic plan for marketing through email to break more campuses.

After looking around for student groups on the websites of major schools, droll and Buffington decided to start in the south with a college-wide break. They include the names and leaders of each organization in the form, including the titles and mailboxes that students receive.

Every Tuesday, Buffington sent thousands of personal emails to students in the form, which included a variety of popular jokes about brotherhood and student organizations.

The beginning of the Mail always said: "So-and-So, hey!" Can you do us a favor, man? " Then he said: "This opportunity to make a fortune you do not miss!"

"The content of the message is basically: ' Yik Yak now fire all over the campus, you haven't started to use it means you suck." ' said Buffington.

The strategy was effective at the first large school Yik Yak, Georgia Tech. Once the Georgia Tech students started playing Yik Yak, the founders turned to the Georgia Tech's rival school, Georgia University.

"That's what our mail says, ' Hey, we have a cool app here called Yik Yak, and all the students from Georgia Tech are using it, so why don't you start using it? '" Buffington said. Within a day, 2000 students at Georgia University were logged into the application.

"The spread of this application requires a Mass effect," Buffington explains, "You have to get 100 users in one day, or more, to make it easier for Yik Yak to stabilize their position in a region." The best way to do this is through organizations. This is how we can expand to 30 to 50 schools in the south, and then we continue to go deep into the Atlantic Alliance School or High School. ”

Yik Yak is busy in the university to get back to buy horses, and fortunately Silicon Valley side of the Yik Yak success is still ignorant. Venture capitalists invest heavily in other anonymous applications such as Whisper and secret. In January, Yik Yak owned its own office, as well as a 20,000 dollar investment from Atlanta capital and up to 100,000 downloads. The second half of the month, TechCrunch reporter Jordan Crook to Atlanta to participate in a science and technology event. In order to further expand the reputation of Yik Yak, Buffington and droll took part in the event to attract the journalist's attention.

A few weeks later, Ron Rofe, who invested in New York's Vaizra, took a look at the TechCrunch website, noting an article in crook that read: "Yik Yak is an anonymous mechanism for college campuses." ”

Rofe immediately picked up the phone, booked a ticket to Georgia. Then he became the first investor to invest in Yik Yak.

Finally woke up in Silicon Valley

In the late January 2014, Buffington's uncle called his primary school classmate, Alan Masarek, who worked at Google.

He told Masarek about Yik Yak and hoped he would give his nephew some advice. Masarek created and sold Quickoffice software a few years ago, a set of efficiency tools for mobile phone use.

"You are in charge of the mobile phone in Google, would you like to talk to these lads or become one of the influential shareholder members?" Masarek's friend asked him so.

Masarek agreed, and began to make some comments and ideas in the communication with Buffington and droll.

Before long, other investors and founders in Silicon Valley began to notice the small movement on the side of Atlanta.

Niko Bonatsos, a partner in general Catalyst, helped his company hammer out a Snapchat investment. He's been to the App store so much that he can quickly and easily quote a wide variety of apps in the order of application or category on any given day. Last February, he noticed that a new application in the social networking category became extremely popular.

Bonatsos downloaded the app and glanced at the anonymous messages he could receive. California users did not start to use or publish information at that time, but he could see some of the most popular comments. "These comments are simply unbelievable!" Bonatsos recalls, "I read a comment and found myself laughing at the end of a madman." ”

That's a good reason enough bonatsos to give Buffington LinkedIn news to agree on a meeting. Bonatsos said their first phone conversation was hilarious.

"Buffington is always telling jokes," he recalls, "I thought, ' Obviously this guy is very interesting and humorous, unlike the founders I met in the San Francisco Bay Area." ’”

Buffington, like Bonatsos, is a bit of a deranged person.

Bonatsos and Buffington, droll hit, then offered to invite them to Los Angeles.

After this trip to California, Yik Yak 1.5 million dollars in the first round of financing, and the valuation reached millions of dollars. Ron Rofe,kevin Colleran,niko Bonatsos and other angel investors all took part in the fundraising. But the money didn't fall out of the sky: Buffington and droll all pledged to solve the bullying on campus through the application, especially the recent high school violence on campus.

After discussion, the founders agreed to launch a sound crazy plan: They want to put Yik Yak a large customer base, that is, high school students, to drive out the application platform.

A rather bold decision

March 15, droll and Buffington held an emergency meeting in their lounge at the Atlanta mini Office. They have to figure out a way to prevent high school students from using Yik Yak. Finding the target group itself is difficult because the application itself is anonymous and there is no way to collect user data. But it can locate a user.

Droll and Buffington have come up with a way to prevent them from using their applications by taking advantage of the places where high school students are located. They will write a program to locate a particular location and then block the Yik Yak users from being logged in to the app. Users who log in to the application in the area will see an error message indicating that they are relocating or trying again. This method of establishing a virtual network near a region is called geo Fencing, or regional restriction.

The founders first set a regional limit for all of Chicago, as Yik Yak caused many disturbances and problems after the advent of Chicago.

"It's funny because the entire city of Chicago is talking about the app--from the news, to the kids and the parents, and it's crazy for the app," he said. It was a topic they kept talking about, and then they talked about it and they wanted to use it, but they finally found they couldn't sign in. Droll said.

The founders each weekend blocked more areas that had been in trouble, such as high schools and junior high schools on the other side of the country. Later, Yik Yak set a regional limit for some 100,000 schools in the United States. At the same time, some other countries have been set up with geographical restrictions to prevent the first round of foreign promotion when the cause of any problems.

"This app is going to be a big fire in high school, so we're sacrificing a lot of customers," Buffington said, "But the reason we have to take action is that we have to make sure the application is not used incorrectly."

The moral stance of droll and Buffington in dealing with the Yik Yak incident has made investors more determined to support the strange, not-so-technical, Georgia boys.

"They actually ' fired ' two-thirds of their clients, and nobody knew that. "It's a brave move, after all, the company is expanding and high school students are using this application, but high school seniors are not mature enough to be able to face this anonymous mechanism rationally," Masarek in a comment that Yik Yak no longer opens up to the National High School. ”

"They took the initiative to block nearly 70% of users," Colleran commented, and he also worked for General Catalyst, and although the company did not invest in Yik Yak, he personally invested in the application as well as Bonatsos, "their ideas are so advanced, So that they would rather lose their users and build a safer environment. ”

Straight into the sky

Many companies that target consumer groups for college students Hate school vacations. The users ran home for the summer vacation, winter vacation or spring break. Playing ping-pong beer games, looking at people on Facebook, or posting messages on Yik Yak are replaced by sleep and family activities.

Spring break in 2014 was a pleasant surprise for Yik Yak, as it reaped unprecedented growth in the first few weeks of March. Not only did the students not leave Yik Yak on spring break, they also brought the app and shared it with friends from other schools.

"You're on the beach with thousands of other college students, and it's not always possible to add them as friends on Twitter," he said. Droll said.

Before spring break, Yik Yak was active only between 30 and 50 schools. By the end of the semester, more than 250 institutions were using Yik Yak.

In June, Yik Yak received 10 million dollars in funding from Colleran, Bonatsos and other investors. Droll and Buffington started to pay for themselves and hired their first regular employee, Ben Popkin. They later hired Tom Chernetsky as chief technology officer, who, since February, has been a consultant to help Yik Yak repair its frequently-failed websites.

One months later, the founders ' fear of something really happened. The summer holidays officially began, and the users of Yik Yak disappeared.

The number of millions of active users who have already been used has been greatly reduced. The use of the volume in several East Coast cities or sports competitions and so on will only rise. Overall, however, Yik Yak no longer appears and has fallen off the App Store list and is no longer in Silicon Valley's spotlight.

"We don't know what it will be like in the fall, because this is the first time we've done it," he said. "There's still a problem, what are we going to be when we get back from our developing school holidays, and how can we expand to more other schools?" said Buffington.

By August these questions were answered.

Although the students used Yik Yak in the summer, they kept talking to their friends about the app, and word of mouth worked in the fall. Yik Yak the best list of app stores with a 100,000-day download and a cloak of rain. It became the third most popular application, ranking even higher than Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest.

All sorts of big investment firms in Silicon Valley suddenly realized that Yik Yak had risen.

Sweeping the market

From the end of August to the late September, the growth rate of Yik Yak was breathtaking, with millions of active users on a monthly basis almost overnight. This application has even broken the geographical limits, through the Rocky Mountains, to the Stanford University campus. The marketing trip was planned by Buffington and Yik Yak, the second campus representative Cam Mullen.

The marketing tour started in Oregon, and at Arizona, State's last stop, the team rented a 50-foot bus and went to 32 colleges in 85 days. Buffington money to the application of the mascot bought a set of special clothing, but also spent thousands of dollars specifically custom-made a cattle-consuming statue hanging in the rear of the marketing bus.

Inside the bus, Yik Yak's seven field sales commissioner and a video photographer are ready to visit frat parties, distributing socks and T-shirts with company logos, and giving students a warm hug.

"If you are a Yik Yak user of a campus, then you meet Yak's mascot and hug him, or you get a Yik Yak pattern sock, or you ride a real cow statue at a party, and you're not just ' yes, I kinda like Yik Yak ', but ' I love this application! Buffington said so.

Venture capitalists are starting to call Colleran, hoping they can be introduced to droll and Buffington. "Within two weeks, I got a call from every partner in every company I know, because none of them knew these two kids," Colleran said, "from the most famous big-name investors to some people I've never spoken to before, everyone is shouting: ' I'm flying to Atlanta. ’”

Jim Goetz heard Yik Yak from his college daughter, whose daughter was extremely keen on using the app. And he was a partner in Sequoia Capital, a big investment in the app before WhatsApp sold it to Facebook at $19 billion.

Despite the initial investment conflict with Whisper, Sequoia Capital was indifferent to Yik Yak's seed and the first round of private equity investment, but later Goetz insisted on making a big round of investment for the autumn's hottest application. He flew to Atlanta several times until he finally persuaded droll and Buffington that Sequoia's investment in Whisper would have no effect on future potential investments in Yik Yak.

Goetz finally Yik Yak 62 million dollars in the B-round financing, and the company's valuation has to break through 400 million dollars. Goetz admits that the application is now on a scale that may be sorry for its 400 million dollar reputation, but the app is addictive once it's played. In particular, investment people see Yik Yak as quickly as Facebook in the university campus market is also quite exciting, daily active in the Yik Yak of the proportion of users also quite high. Those users tend to stay on Yik Yak for a long time, and 22% of Yik Yak users actively send posts.

Within two semesters, Yik Yak has spread over 1600 schools, with about 50% to 80% per cent of students in each school. About 1400 of these schools were Yik Yak, who joined in the fall. More than 1000 campus newspaper articles are reporting Yik Yak (a tactic Facebook uses to increase usage).

"I was one of their first 10 employees when I joined Facbook because I loved it as a landmark on campus," Colleran said, "And now Yik Yak is the only platform I feel like after Facebook." ”

The company now has 25 employees and is constantly poach from large companies such as Google and Dropbox. He also has more than 350 campus representatives.

If you ask droll or Buffington if they know how difficult it is to build 400 million-dollar companies in a year, they may just shrug.

"At this point, it's hard to take a step back and think about what happened before: ' Gee, we swept the entire American university market almost in a semester. ' "But for us, there are a lot of college campuses where only about half of the students are using Yik Yak, so we need to raise that number to 100%," Buffington said. It's like chasing a hare is a process that never stops. ”

Droll also agreed that it was a bottomless pit, but he was grateful for what he had accomplished today, "waking up every morning, making breakfast for yourself, driving the same car, but the achievement is staggering." "he said.

Yik Yak, which prevented high school students from using software, suppressed most of the bullying, but could not completely eliminate all problems. Since then the application itself has been involved in tools to help maintain community management and various ways to clean up racist, sick and other offensive posts by labeling keywords or names.

However, when I sent my first message in application in January, I was called a "tool" within 15 minutes. The bullying or threat of violence that high school students use when using Yik Yak is now appearing on college campuses. Some professors even applied to the university to seal off the application. Some other universities have banned students from using the app. In October Google Play also had to Yik Yak's ranking.

The students ' evaluation of Yik Yak is uneven. Aimee Knecht, a senior at the University of Tennessee, thinks she herself: "Honestly, you shouldn't use Yik Yak so often." ”

When we asked how popular the application was on campus, she said, "It's just too hot to imagine." ”

Her peers also play Tinder or a new quiz game called Trivia Crack, but

Use Yik Yak as the main pastime. "In general, the application is extremely ironic, extremely

Honesty, "she commented," Basically, we all will, but in public, we don't

Dare to say those words. These posts are very funny. But when someone sends a serious topic, like

Someone is depressed, or simply talking about the unity of the school, the whole Yik Yak everyone

The court will also be willing to listen to these voices. ”

Yik Yak has also been proven to be an effective defense system for university campuses. Most other students saw the news on Yik Yak before receiving college emails last fall at a student shootings in Florida State University.

Samantha Fulgham, another senior student at the University of Alabama, says most students seem to be using Yik Yak. But she says most students use this application only to bully others, so she has deleted the app twice because she thinks "it's a moral mistake" when reading someone else's comments.

"It's not a very good name for this application," says Fulgham, 21, "which is basically a place that people use to bully people and make brutal comments on the internet." I thought it would be like an anonymous Twitter full of interesting comments, but it ended up being just a place to spread rumors and speak ill of others on campus. ”

Whether Yik Yak can completely skim its bad name is unknown. Previously anonymous applications were whisper by users who were told to spread rumors. Another anonymous application, called Secret, has lost its allure after raising 25 million of dollars in money. And users have fiercely sued a juicy campus's university gossip site, which allows for a variety of defamatory comments.

But one who seems unlikely is particularly supportive of this platform, and she is Elizabeth Long.

She and her father were invited by Yik Yak to go to the company headquarters in December to tell what happened to Woodward Academy. Both of them now believe that droll and Buffington are trying to build a positive atmosphere and that the application will eventually succeed.

19

"Before I met droll and Buffington, I figured out an experiment with the Yik Yak, two little brats, who probably didn't understand how the application ended up being used to humiliate others," Long's father said in an e-mail, "but after meeting with them, When I came back, I was deeply convinced that both of them were genuinely trying to avoid such mistakes, and that they were also plagued by the damage caused by such bullying. I don't think most people would have imagined that they were already taking a lot of forward-looking work to prevent cyber violence. ”

Silicon Valley still supports droll and Buffington's stance.

"The best investment is always controversial. Bonatsos concludes.