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>Yik Yak - the anonymous social media app that was at the center of several college harassment scandals - announced its closure on April 28, after struggling to

>Yik Yak - the anonymous social media app that was at the center of several college harassment scandals - announced its closure on April 28, after struggling to keep users on its platform. YikYak was very popular at my univeristy back in 2014. What replaced it? Or has anonymous social media fallen out of favor all together?

dylz 9y ago
Yikyak removed anonymity (it wasn't anonymous in the first place - devices, phone numbers, and invisible accounts were tracked/established/attached to posts), added public user profiles/names.
opportune 9y ago
Jodel is the main replacement to my knowledge. There might be others too, but I don't think any of them have caught on very much. It's a shame because there definitely still is a market for a yikyak clone, but I doubt investors are going to be very bullish about one. I think the main reason anonymous social media is out of favor is that it's hard to monetize. It's hard to gather information (and thus serve valuable ads) about your users when they are explicitly using your app to not share that information. When yikyak introduced profiles, I think that was when everybody stopped using it.
- dylz 9y ago
  Anecdotal, but previously at UCB and now at UW for undergrad I've not seen a single person with Jodel installed - none of my friends have ever used or even known about it either. Is it more EU-targetted or seeded initially?
  - v3gas 9y ago
    More EU seeded, I guess, yes. Started in Germany.
denzil_correa 9y ago
> Or has anonymous social media fallen out of favor all together? Whisper still exists http://whisper.sh http://whisper.sh
- tschwimmer 9y ago
  There's another app called Blind that's sort of like Yik Yak for SV tech companies.
majjam 9y ago
I enjoyed YikYak very much, reminded me of 'local' chat in Eve online. When it closed the alternatives seemed to be Jodel (German-centric), Spout (whilst your posts are localised, all users can see them instead of just local users, heavily moderated compared to YY) and Swiflie (allows nsfw content). However imo none provide the uncensored, very local experience that YikYak did.
- fencepost 9y ago
  Yik-Yak was briefly entertaining in a "wow so that's what kids are talking about these days" way, but with no focus it was kind of vapid. Another geolocated thing that briefly existed was Google+ - at one point and only on mobile if you stopped the screen to the right there was a "Nearby" listing that showed public posts within some geographic radius that was never quite clear.
  - asveikau 9y ago
    I think that was actually Google Buzz circa 2009. It was an awesome feature. I remember using it on the Google maps app for WinCE (which was also a very good app at the time, people forget)... > When the service was accessed with a supported mobile device, Buzz tagged posts with the user's current location. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Buzz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Buzz
fencepost 9y ago
Interestingly, I think if it had lived only a few months longer Yik-Yak might have found new life as chat for collaborative augmented reality or real world interactive games. I'll use as the example Pokémon Go, which within the last month revised a major part of the game to introduce a feature that requires teams of people to defeat (gym raids). This has ended up with an assortment of tools being used in attempts to organize those teams, as well as some folks simply showing up and hoping others do the same. These include multiple fan/independent Discords, Facebook, and at least one browser map-based "I'm going to X" solution. Yik-Yak's geolocated chat (minus the anonymity that caused them so much trouble) seems like it would have been an excellent framework for for local team chats.
didymospl 9y ago
Do you think there is room for similar app? I haven't heard about Yik Yak but I have had the idea to create a local chat for some time already. And now, just a couple of weeks after I'd finally started writing some initial prototype(just after hours coding so far) I found out that my idea had already been implemented and failed miserably. Personally I'd use it to meet new people when I'm travelling alone or when none of my friends is interested to join me in an activity such as concert, tennis, football etc

dylz 9y ago

Yikyak removed anonymity (it wasn't anonymous in the first place - devices, phone numbers, and invisible accounts were tracked/established/attached to posts), added public user profiles/names.

opportune 9y ago

Jodel is the main replacement to my knowledge. There might be others too, but I don't think any of them have caught on very much. It's a shame because there definitely still is a market for a yikyak clone, but I doubt investors are going to be very bullish about one. I think the main reason anonymous social media is out of favor is that it's hard to monetize. It's hard to gather information (and thus serve valuable ads) about your users when they are explicitly using your app to not share that information. When yikyak introduced profiles, I think that was when everybody stopped using it.

dylz 9y ago
Anecdotal, but previously at UCB and now at UW for undergrad I've not seen a single person with Jodel installed - none of my friends have ever used or even known about it either. Is it more EU-targetted or seeded initially?
- v3gas 9y ago
  More EU seeded, I guess, yes. Started in Germany.

denzil_correa 9y ago

> Or has anonymous social media fallen out of favor all together? Whisper still exists http://whisper.sh http://whisper.sh

tschwimmer 9y ago
There's another app called Blind that's sort of like Yik Yak for SV tech companies.

majjam 9y ago

I enjoyed YikYak very much, reminded me of 'local' chat in Eve online. When it closed the alternatives seemed to be Jodel (German-centric), Spout (whilst your posts are localised, all users can see them instead of just local users, heavily moderated compared to YY) and Swiflie (allows nsfw content). However imo none provide the uncensored, very local experience that YikYak did.

fencepost 9y ago
Yik-Yak was briefly entertaining in a "wow so that's what kids are talking about these days" way, but with no focus it was kind of vapid. Another geolocated thing that briefly existed was Google+ - at one point and only on mobile if you stopped the screen to the right there was a "Nearby" listing that showed public posts within some geographic radius that was never quite clear.
- asveikau 9y ago
  I think that was actually Google Buzz circa 2009. It was an awesome feature. I remember using it on the Google maps app for WinCE (which was also a very good app at the time, people forget)... > When the service was accessed with a supported mobile device, Buzz tagged posts with the user's current location. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Buzz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Buzz

fencepost 9y ago

Interestingly, I think if it had lived only a few months longer Yik-Yak might have found new life as chat for collaborative augmented reality or real world interactive games. I'll use as the example Pokémon Go, which within the last month revised a major part of the game to introduce a feature that requires teams of people to defeat (gym raids). This has ended up with an assortment of tools being used in attempts to organize those teams, as well as some folks simply showing up and hoping others do the same. These include multiple fan/independent Discords, Facebook, and at least one browser map-based "I'm going to X" solution. Yik-Yak's geolocated chat (minus the anonymity that caused them so much trouble) seems like it would have been an excellent framework for for local team chats.

didymospl 9y ago

Do you think there is room for similar app? I haven't heard about Yik Yak but I have had the idea to create a local chat for some time already. And now, just a couple of weeks after I'd finally started writing some initial prototype(just after hours coding so far) I found out that my idea had already been implemented and failed miserably. Personally I'd use it to meet new people when I'm travelling alone or when none of my friends is interested to join me in an activity such as concert, tennis, football etc