Why minimalism social application Yo attracted the news?

Huang 锴 / text

Yo, a minimalist social application, has received a $ 1.5 million seed-funding round of financing and is valued at $ 10 million. It is noteworthy that its investors: Tencent's founding team, which is Ma Huateng, Zhang Zhidong, Xu Chen Ye, Zeng Liqing, Chen Yidan, these five people invested more than 250,000 US dollars; other with the investment, including venture capital plant in New York Betaworks, co-founder of Yo Moshe Hogeg, and Pete Cashmore, founder of Internet news blog Mashable.

For Tencent founding team invest Yo, Tencent official said inconvenience to comment. However, Yo has been in the United States in just a few months with the fire, the rapid growth of itself, perhaps the best comment.

April 1 this year, Yo in the APP Store on the line and inconspicuous. But in June, the new chat product, "Yo," that sent only a message to a friend suddenly caught fire on Twitter and attracted a lot of attention and discussion.

Many people think that Yo seems to be the most boring application in the world. With it, users can add address book friends and send "Yo" to greet them. No follow-up social, no more information, the user can only send "Yo". Because of this, the app looks simple and rude to many people, but unexpectedly it fires - Yo currently has more than 2 million downloads since April Fool's Day, and users send "Yo" More than 2 million times. It is reported that Yo's new version of the application will be on the line soon. In stark contrast, Yo's current membership is only a handful of people.

Yo founder Or Abel (Russia · Abel) said Yo will maintain a minimalist style, but it will not stop there. He had also publicly stated before, "Our goal is to create a push ecosystem based on Yo." Yo currently attracts more than 2,000 developers who are trying to create richer applications based on this chat product.

For example, during the World Cup, some developers developed a notification system using Yo, and if a team scored a goal, they would receive a Yo on their cell phone. Interestingly, the user does not know which team went into the ball. At a coffee shop, merchants can inform consumers by simply "Yo" that coffee is ready. This application is now being promoted to Starbucks. In addition, the Italian blog site "The Breakfast Review" uses "Yo" to send readers the latest articles from bloggers who follow. Some developers even envisaged to allow businesses to send Yo to their customers in a unified manner, telling them that the promotion for the new season started.

Insiders pointed out that Yo's role is equivalent to "single communication", it is like a siren sound, parking lights, or is running a sign, whether the taxi is empty car ceiling lamps. An example of the single most common communication in the world is "Missed Calls," and many people deliberately press their phones off before the other party picks up to allow for the free exchange of common messages. For example, two consecutive missed calls may indicate "I'll be late."

In fact, Yo was developed in the original intention is to "notice." Yo's co-founder Moshe Hogeg initially needed Or Abel to develop an app with a big button as a bell to call the secretary. With just one click, the message is pushed to the secretary's phone. So, Yo came into being.

Yo's investor Betaworks explained that in the past period of time, they have been concerned about the application of this level of notice bar. Today, both Android and iOS 8 are refining the functionality of the notification bar, as message notifications are likely to become the navigation layer before consumers enter the operating system in the future. Right now, in Betaworks' office, management advises team members through Yo that there is no need for team members to respond specifically. More importantly, this simple push will serve as a unified notification tool for other applications, hardware products, and more.

Although this "one word application" has great potential, but it has to say that its product technology threshold is too low. Due to the single function, Yo's competitors are more and more. To continue to get first-mover advantage, Yo must continually focus on "notification services" to allow itself to rapidly increase the number of users, and to design richer user scenarios. Fortunately, its users are growing fast.

Or Abel, founder of Yo, said Yo will use the newly raised funds to expand its presence in San Francisco. And the company has started hiring a team of engineers and business development staff to help companies expand their brand partnerships. (Editor Lu Aifang Xin Court Wei)