What's up 'Yo'?

I bought my first phone, the classic Nokia 3310 by collecting several ‘ang pao's’ that I received during the Chinese New Year of 2001.

Prior to owning my own phone, I remembered having to go to a public pay phone every time I wanted to call home. In order to surf the World Wide Web, my only go-to option was the dial-up internet service and the then newly purchased HP Pavilion 4450 Desktop PC.

For the first time in my life, I was introduced to the wider world through digitalised content.

It’s very likely that 70% of you are reading this piece off a mobile device.

Better infrastructure and the decrease in the cost of mobile data consumption has made it possible for us to create and consume content at any moment of the day.

As more of us are now on mobile, day by day, new apps are created to fill the market - there is now literally an app for everything.

If you are like me, you are likely to have ‘hear it first’ on social media.

In my case, ‘Yo’ grabbed my attention when I saw an update about it from a friend on Facebook. My immediate reaction was “another social app?” I moved on without giving it much thought.

In the days that followed, news started to break on my Twitter feed from leading investors, tech enthusiasts, tech blogs and news sites that the creators of ‘Yo’ has successfully raised funds from venture capitalists at USD1million. Some even debated how ‘stupid’ the app was.

Curiosity got the better of me, to find out what the hype was all about and I downloaded the ‘Yo’ app. And yes, directly contributed to the stats of its app download.

I have even tweeted to mark the occasion:

If you take a look at the app description on the App Store, it gives off subtle confidence between the lines which seemingly suggests that we can be rest assured we will less likely to come across any other social app as simple as ‘Yo’ at this point of time.

"'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'.

What’s Up ‘Yo’? Wanna say "good morning"? just Yo.

Wan to say "Baby I'm thinking about you"? - Yo.

"I've finished my meeting, come by my office" - Yo.

"Are you up?" - Yo.

The possibilities are endless.”

The required action is minimal, all it takes is just a tap on a name to send a greeting. I launched ‘Yo’, searched for my friends and voila! The one-tap communication started instantly. Somehow, this app offered me the opportunity to interact with some friends who have been getting out of touch.

With more media attention now putting ‘Yo’ and its creators in the limelight, it is just a matter of time when more will join the ‘Yo’ community. Despite the simplicity of the app, ‘Yo’ has garnered more than 790,000 users and is reportedly growing rapidly.

Not your cup of tea? I am not certain I am all for it either. For the record, the ‘Yo’ app on my iPhone started to get pretty quiet after a day.