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The accidental genius of Yo

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Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#31

Post by treeman79 »

pcardoso wrote: post #16

Years ago calling and immediately hanging up was immensely popular among teenagers/young adults as a way to ping someone. Used as a way of flirting, telling something was ready, arrived at home.

Growing up, My dad wasn’t allowed to make personal calls at work.

Calling and hanging up didn’t count, so that is what we would do. We would know to call back.

Years later I ran reports for call centers. I would run data every which way.

Found an agent that would dial a disconnect number hundreds of times a day.

Went to big boss, as I couldn’t figure out the rational.

He took one look at it, and cursed “well know we know how he has top numbers.

Found so many ways agents would mess with metrics

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#32

Post by boxed »

andruby wrote: post #18
jasonv wrote: post #3

My shortcut to text my partner is called “Yo” and sends a “Yo”. Use it all the time. She knows when I’m leaving a store, or swinging by the house to pick her up, or when we’re in a store and ready to meet at the checkout lanes. I think frequently that the app could’ve survived and have been useful. The iterations they went through took it in less useful directions, but the idea itself didn’t need to die. Feels like a…

But how could they’ve monetized? Would you still use it with ads inserted?

Sell it for the minimum prize?

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#34

Post by hengheng »

andruby wrote: post #18
jasonv wrote: post #3

My shortcut to text my partner is called “Yo” and sends a “Yo”. Use it all the time. She knows when I’m leaving a store, or swinging by the house to pick her up, or when we’re in a store and ready to meet at the checkout lanes. I think frequently that the app could’ve survived and have been useful. The iterations they went through took it in less useful directions, but the idea itself didn’t need to die. Feels like a…

But how could they’ve monetized? Would you still use it with ads inserted?

What would be the cost of running it? How much would it take to make it profitable?

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#35

Post by unsignedchar »

pcardoso wrote: post #16

Years ago calling and immediately hanging up was immensely popular among teenagers/young adults as a way to ping someone. Used as a way of flirting, telling something was ready, arrived at home.

I remember reading that people used to do this with letters in early days of mail, when postage used to be too high for common people

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#36

Post by harryf »

Back when Yo was initially on the hype curve we created a clone for Switzerland called Hoi (a Swiss German way to say Hi) for a joke - link to some press we got below - one of the guys in the picture wasn’t even really involved we just included him and called him CEO to add to the craziness. Technically we had pretty good native iOS and Android apps, backend running on Parse.com (RIP). We got about 10K downloads until Yo actually tried to come after us via the iOS App Store with a vague claim of copying. We defended it OK, no lawyers required but it seemed kinda uncool. We even got our photos in Schweizer Illustriete, which is a dumb magazine featuring Swiss stars - it was the summer media hole so they were desperate. We also ended up adding features Yo didn’t have like sending a photo with your “Hoi” ... took less than 1 week until random strangers were sending naked parts of their body - freaked me out that anyone would trust a random app with their privacy...

Then the hype blew over, Parse shut down and we lost interest until I actually met the Yo CEO at a mobile event in Berlin, and after initially accosting him we ended up taking a selfie together and made up.

Anyway just a random anecdote of developers with too much time on their hands.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/apps/ap...

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#37

Post by tlarkworthy »

The article repeatedly makes the mistaken assertion that sending a 'Yo' constitutes 1 bit of information transmitted. This is mistaken as the information also holds temporal information, which is actually what is very useful. It's not a Yo at some random point, it's a Yo now. It's really encoding "now!". Still not very much information but a ton more than 1 bit, its a timestamps worth in fact...

/pedant

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#38

Post by hk__2 »

tlarkworthy wrote: post #37

The article repeatedly makes the mistaken assertion that sending a 'Yo' constitutes 1 bit of information transmitted. This is mistaken as the information also holds temporal information, which is actually what is very useful. It's not a Yo at some random point, it's a Yo now. It's really encoding "now!". Still not very much information but a ton more than 1 bit, its a timestamps worth in fact... /pedant

> The article repeatedly makes the mistaken assertion that sending a 'Yo' constitutes 1 bit of information transmitted. This is mistaken as the information also holds temporal information, which is actually what is very useful. t's not a Yo at some random point, it's a Yo now. It's really encoding "now!". Still not very much information but a ton more than 1 bit.

It’s still one bit. The time is not part of the transmission.

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#39

Post by ralph84 »

pcardoso wrote: post #16

Years ago calling and immediately hanging up was immensely popular among teenagers/young adults as a way to ping someone. Used as a way of flirting, telling something was ready, arrived at home.

My middle school had a pay phone in the lobby. After-school activities had a variable end time so when I needed my mom to pick me up I’d call her collect. She never accepted the charges, but knew it was time to head over to the school.

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#40

Post by capableweb »

hk__2 wrote: post #38
tlarkworthy wrote: post #37

The article repeatedly makes the mistaken assertion that sending a 'Yo' constitutes 1 bit of information transmitted. This is mistaken as the information also holds temporal information, which is actually what is very useful. It's not a Yo at some random point, it's a Yo now. It's really encoding "now!". Still not very much information but a ton more than 1 bit, its a timestamps worth in fact... /pedant

> The article repeatedly makes the mistaken assertion that sending a 'Yo' constitutes 1 bit of information transmitted. This is mistaken as the information also holds temporal information, which is actually what is very useful. t's not a Yo at some random point, it's a Yo now. It's really encoding "now!". Still not very much information but a ton more than 1 bit. It’s still one bit. The time is not part of the transm…

Time is absolutely part of the transmission. It matters when you say "Hi" to someone. Differently timed "Hi"'s can say different things. Even if you repeat "Hi" many times, it's still just "Hi" but the amount of them also matters and becomes part of the transmission when looking at all of them together.

I feel like many, especially developers, fail to see what is in between the data to matter as well as the data itself. Seems like a common hole to fall into.

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