An App That Lets You Say ‘YO!’ No, Really

Yo!: A two letter word that has been the opening line to many an epic freestyle rap; a fond greeting or a subtle protest. This tiny shape-shifting, one syllable word is now an app. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, an app. One as simplistic as the word itself.

“The simplest and most efficient communication tool in the world. Yo is a single-tap zero character communication tool.

Yo is everything and anything, it all depends on you, the recipient and the time of the Yo…”

And THAT in my opinion is what its developer is playing on! “Yo is everything and anything…” that means it is open to interpretation. People will talk about its simplicity, they will tweet about its ridiculousness and they will invest huge sums of money in this unfounded ‘potential’. Already, $1 million has been invested in this app that took only 8 hours to create.

This is how the app works; want to say, “good morning”?- Send a Yo. Want to say, “I love you, babe”?-Send a Yo. Or maybe you want to start the revolution, just send a simple Yo. No lie; this is basically all the app does.

There are plans to integrate this app with service providers so that you can receive a Yo when your package arrives at the post office, or you could send a Yo to your cab driver to let him know to come and pick you up. But either way, this to me is not something that is worth a million dollar hubbub.

I’m afraid we might be facing another dot com bubble. When the new millennium was upon us and people had recovered from their fear of the dreaded Y2K, companies began to invest in internet start-ups worth virtually nothing. These were companies that had no previous profits, track records or even tiny offices; companies that only had ‘potential’. The bubble burst and these companies tanked ungracefully. I see this happening again (19 billion dollar WhatsApp anybody?).

Arbel, the app’s inventor, has already quit his job and is on a global domination scheme. I feel he’s playing on the fact that corporations with huge sums of money are looking for the next big thing to literally throw their cash at. He knows well that millions of people will download it worldwide (myself included), and this has the ‘potential’ to change even a quantum of our lives, be it for jesting or investing. 50, 000 people have downloaded the app since it was launched on, get this, April Fool’s Day of this year.

Yo’s Twitter page and website maintain the same minimalistic theme. No frills. Just Yo’s. You’ll probably download it too. And 5 years down the line, I’ll probably eat this scepticism with a nice cool glass of, man-I-was-so-wrong. Until then, send me a Yo.