Hands On With Yo, The Absurdly Simple Messaging App

In certain web-obsessed circles, the word of the day today was definitely “yo.”

Yo is a ridiculously simple smartphone app that allows you to contact friends with one word messages that say, you guessed it, yo. The app launched on April 1st (no joke) but only really started to pick up viral steam in recent days — culminating in full-on fad status today after a feature in the Financial Times which noted that Yo has received some $1 million in funding from high profile investors. For a significant part of today, many people in the tech sphere couldn’t take a look at their Twitter streams without seeing some kind of Yo reference.

My colleague Sarah Buhr has been hip to Yo for a couple of days now, which practically makes her an expert on the service. So I asked her to show me the ropes as I downloaded the app for the first time. See what it’s like to Yo by watching the video embedded above.

In short, we downloaded Yo (and put it on video) so you don’t have to.

My takeaway? It’s weird fun for a few hours, but definitely a fad. The fascination with it feels a lot like the fascination people had for that Friday song a few years back — it’s so stupid, you can’t quite believe it actually was made and put out for public consumption.

You should also read Jordan Crook’s analysis of Yo and its rapid rise to fame here.