A screengrab of posts on the anonymous app “Yik Yak,” which shows messages from users in a nearby geographic area. The Atlanta-based company behind the app is trying to expand its appeal beyond college campuses. Credit: Yik Yak, Inc.
Date/time: Monday 11:00 a.m.
Panelist: Tyler Droll, CEO of Yik Yak and Brooks Buffington, COO of Yik Yak, Social Media Journalist Carmel DeAmicis, GigaOM
The gist:
Sporting matching Yik Yak socks, co-founders Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington gave a rare public talk for a SXSW interview about Yik Yak, the sucessful location-based social network that shows anonymous messages.
Yik Yak has caught fire in college campuses and is picking up steam among older audiences.
It took Droll and Buffington two tries with other applications before creating one that really resonated with users, they said. The two met at Furman University in South Carolina, where they had mutal tennis buddies and were also in the same fraternity.
“We told everyone we made (Yik Yak) for Harvard kids,” Buffington said, in an effort to generate more buzz. It worked. The pair also sent personalized emails to student organization leaders across college campuses and nudged them to use the app and letting them know if their rival schools were using it too.
Today, not only has Yik Yak has spread across the country, but the app has plans to expand internationally, starting in English-speaking countries. In November, Twitter launched a similar location-based functionality.
“I didn’t know it was coming,” Droll said. “It’s definitely a nice shout out from Twitter, but I’m curious to see how it plays out … it’s not core to their experience.”
Yik Yak founders said they are not worried about it and feel strongly about their core demographic and are focusing on improving their product. And no, Twitter hasn’t offered to buy Yik Yak.
“We wanted level the playing field for content. A place where your race, religion…didn’t matter, it just mattered if you had something good to say,” Buffington said.
Takeaways:
A key secret to their success? Droll said, “Start simple. Start small. Start now.”
After a campus shooting at Florida State University, Yik Yak users found out about it nine minutes before their campus alert went out. Yik Yak co-founders says that presents a unique opportunity for how the app can be used during breaking news events. Droll says he can see Yik Yak functioning “like a local newspaper (in the future), more focused on topics.”
While other social applications have started in tech hubs, Yik Yak founders said they felt it was beneficial for them to have started at a college campus that wasn’t indundated with requests to download an app. Students were more willing to try it and tell their friends.
Being based in Atlanta and away from the typical tech scene has also been beneficial to them, they said. They’ve found good tech talent there with the Georgia Tech as well as many engineers who are willing to commute from Altanta to other cities like New York.
“We’re hometown hereos,” Droll said. “That’s where our families are, and that’s where we want to be. Why do we need to move?”
Yik Yak founders said that two of the biggest misconceptions about the app are that it’s used mostly used by high school students, and that it’s a place that makes cyberbullying easier. Droll says that 95% of their users are college students. Since the app is for ages 17 and up, they’ve taken extreme measures to block it’s use across high school campuses in America.“Cyberbullying is terrible, and we try to curb it as much as we can,” Buffington said. After a meeting with a young woman who experienced cyberbullying, Yik Yak founders took steps to improve their filters and moderation system. “We’re also giving the community better tools to deal with this…(through reporting inappropriate behavior). Yik Yak can also suspend or kick out a user if they break the rules.
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