WHAT’S A YIK YAK?
Yik Yak is a free smartphone messaging app. It enables users to communicate within a geographic radius — usually a few miles — which the company says lets you "find your herd." Popular on college campuses, Yik Yak is typically used to share news and jokes, offer support, ask questions or make observations about group experiences. Users are anonymous, a feature the company says gives everyone an equal voice, but also one that has led to instances of bullying, abuse or other objectionable activities.
AUSTIN, TEXAS — The pair of sandy blond app founders sat cross-legged on a stage, their mint green socks with woolly yak heads the only clue that they weren’t just another pair of millennials-on-the-make drawn to this city’s famed South by Southwest festival.
Brooks Buffington and Tyler Droll, the college bros who lead Yik Yak, were outlining the future of their creation. It’s a hit social media platform that ranks among metro Atlanta’s most talked-about startups.
The anonymous, location-based app is popular among college students and has users at more than 2,000 campuses in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, the founders say.
Yik Yak has reportedly attracted more than $70 million in venture funding despite not being a revenue producing firm. But its users’ anonymity has allowed some to make it a platform for bullying and other abuses.
The 25-year-olds, who both went to Furman University and could still easily pass as undergrads, outlined steps they’re taking to fix those problems. Identifiable user “handles” launched this month will help the app create a tighter knit social community and let users cultivate digital personas, while also helping the team police some of Yik Yak’s Wild West attributes.
The handles will give credibility to users of the network and institute a new measure of accountability, they said.
In an interview after their SXSW chat, the Yik Yak founders said First Amendment issues and dealing with law enforcement when threats or illicit activity arise weren’t exactly at the top of their minds when they launched the service in November 2013.
“Those aren’t the sorts of things you are thinking about when you’re trying to get things off the ground,” Buffington said.
The panel was part of the ChooseATL marketing event in Austin. The Metro Atlanta Chamber-backed group hit SXSW to recruit young professionals to come to the Big Peach.
Yik Yak is one of the buzzy Atlanta tech companies that recruiters want to show off to prove the city’s tech bona fides. Buffington and Droll also were in Austin to scout talent and meet with investors and others, Droll said.
Asked about plans to generate revenue and engaging business, Droll said he and Buffington are working to create online communities that would appeal to companies.
“I think if we build awesome communities businesses will want to be part of that,” he said.
Here are excerpts from an interview with Buffington and Droll, edited for clarity and length.
Q: With Twitter or Instagram you have social media stars. Do “handles” permit a user of Yik Yak to cultivate a brand?
Droll: Yik Yak is pretty different in the sense that there aren't followers, it's all a community, so regardless of who you are it is hitting the feed and the audience just like anyone else's post. The reputation you may build up through that … we're curious to see what will happen there.
Q: But as you add identity, does that take away the anonymity that has been at the core of Yik Yak?
Buffington: The core is local and location and when you talk to our users, that's what they say it is. I like to be able to hear from the people around me. I think that "anonymous" is something that is easily pulled out as like that's what we're all about, but when you get down to what makes us special it's location.
Q: You got some questions about abuse on the platform, I’d like to know how you are addressing those issues.
Buffington: It's a really tough thing when you are a company just starting off and you really don't have all these issues lined up that you know are going to come and they just start coming. It's an industry problem that everyone has to address and from the beginning we've done a really good job addressing it. We've had (capabilities) from the beginning that a lot of services don't have where the community has a lot of power to say 'I don't like this post, get it off my feed.' We geo-fenced off high schools and middle schools (a step to prevent younger people from using the app). That was our step to say, 'Hey, listen there are a lot of users that we're leaving out now but these aren't the kinds of users … that we want right now.'
Our report flow is constantly being tinkered with and built out in new ways to allow users to flag to use and say ‘take a look at this.’ We’ll take a look at it and remove it and suspend users if need be. In the background we’ll have filters running to make sure the worst of the worst doesn’t stay up.
Q: How do you look at the app in its place in society and its role?
Droll: It's awesome that an app you work on is a part of college students daily life around the world. It's really cool to take this to other campuses around the world or outside of college.
Q: In that evolution, has it gone in places you didn’t expect?
Buffington: When we started it off you know light-hearted jokes and cool information being spread and things like that. Then really powerful situations, an active shooter on campus and students being notified about that situation (on Yik Yak) 10 or 15 minutes before a text alert came out (from their university). Things like that that makes you realize our app connects people around you to information super quickly and that no other service does that, we're able to solve some really serious problems.
Q: Fifty (employees) is not a lot and you are talking about adding college campuses and going international. How large of an organization might you need to handle that growth?
Droll: We don't know the exact number, but we are in growth mode and that means hiring enough people to achieve our goals. We've got a great office space in Atlanta we can grow into. …That doesn't mean hiring two more people that means hiring a lot more.
Q: When you look at the FBI and what is happening with Apple and the San Bernadino shooting (the FBI is seeking the courts to force Apple to breach one of the shooter’s iPhone), are you observing that and your interaction with law enforcement?
Droll: It's a very interesting time. We'll be following it closely. We're in a different situation with law enforcement, but we're following it closely because it's a big ask of Apple.
Q: The future of Yik Yak. Do you see yourselves running this company 10 years from now, the rest of your lives? Do you plan to sell? What is the future of the company?
Droll: I do not know. I know what we're focused on and where we're headed. I wish I could predict the future. That would be nice.
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