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For a good while, Yik Yak was very popular on my campus. Then when handles became mandatory, basically everyone stopped using it. Even after they back-pedaled,
by marcelluspye 9y ago
For a good while, Yik Yak was very popular on my campus. Then when handles became mandatory, basically everyone stopped using it. Even after they back-pedaled, though, our feed was merged with several in the surrounding area, so we lost the sense of community we had with it on campus, and it never took off again.
I don't know about overall, but in my social microcosm yik yak was never able to recover its lost users.
- rbobby 9y agoNever used the app, never heard of it... but I'm confused by "when handles became mandatory"? Prior to that it was just anonymous chat (with optional user id)? Why would requiring handles (user id's... right?) have made such a difference?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- nefitty 9y agoImagine you suddenly applied HN's posting etiquette to 4Chan. That's basically how it felt.
- cookiecaper 9y agoI never used it but my understanding is that it was an anonymous outlet where people in the area could post and get fed into the same channel. You could say whatever you wanted without worrying it getting traced back to you, and nearby people would see it. For obvious reasons, that was popular at colleges. Also for obvious reasons, this kind of thing is really hard to monetize. Take almost $100M in VC and this does not make for a winning combination. Online anonymity can be freeing, but as any half-awake internet user knows, it comes with a massive mound of worms for both readers and moderators alike. Big name investors apparently didn't realize this when they wrote the checks, so YikYak panicked and nixed its value proposition to keep investors happy and bad press diverted. It sounds like everyone stopped using it immediately, which seems only natural, as they killed its entire reason to exist.