I joined Yo a month ago today, and I seriously love it.
The premise: You send your friends a push notification that reads “Yo” (notice there is no exclamation point). In reply, they can send you back a “Yo,” but that’s it.
It’s a zero-character social network, where we don’t have to worry about what to post, what to reply, what to like, or if sharing geolocation will kill your battery.
Its simplicity is refreshing in a mobile app world cluttered with so much complexity. And I think that’s why internal teams at Foursquare and Kickstarter have embraced it. And my group of close friends, too.
If you think sharing silly Yo’s seems too minimal to have an impact, do you remember when 140 characters seemed constrictive? Soon after, users starting abandoning 800 word blogs posts for tweets due to ease of publishing.
Will that happen with Yo? Probably not, but there’s a lesson here about simplicity we can all learn from.
Sometimes simply and silly is more impactful than complex utility. Yo.
GREG SWAN 