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The accidental genius of Yo

capiche.com

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Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#21

Post by ehnto »

runarberg wrote: post #17
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.

If you had enough credit to make a phone call, but didn’t want to waste your credits on a text, calling and hanging up is the rational thing to do as it costs nothing (provided you hang up before the other party answers). The price of a text for a teenager was significant back then. The other party might be a parent who could use a landline to call you back for cheaper, or a friend who called back using their parent’…

In my country if you had no credit at all, for some reason you could still dial for long enough that the person recieved a brief blip and a missed call. That was invaluable as a teenager as if I was stuck I could blip my parents and they could call back properly.

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#23

Post by inciampati »

maguay wrote: post #14
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #2

Tangential, but I would be curious to know if "capiche" refers to the Italian "capisci?", which is Neapolitan dialect meaning "do you understand?".

Author here—yup, it’s based on the Italian word.

Is that the standard way to write the word in english? It'd be pronounced "kapikay" (ch=k) rather than capisce (sce=shhe) if read in italian.

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#24

Post by crtasm »

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?

Merch. Get your Yo baseball cap and coffee mug.

Enjoying this line from the post: "At some level of abstraction, it’s Yo all the way down."

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#27

Post by beamatronic »

runarberg wrote: post #17
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.

If you had enough credit to make a phone call, but didn’t want to waste your credits on a text, calling and hanging up is the rational thing to do as it costs nothing (provided you hang up before the other party answers). The price of a text for a teenager was significant back then. The other party might be a parent who could use a landline to call you back for cheaper, or a friend who called back using their parent’…

This context is helpful. They hacked the system to take advantage of free notifications.

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#28

Post by aripickar »

sambostock wrote: post #6

Years ago, I hooked up my apartment buzzer to Yo with a raspberry pi. https://github.com/sambostock/yoorbell It was super insecure, but if you yo'd it, it would let you in, and if someone buzzed the buzzer, it would yo me. Exactly as much info as needed.

Ooh I did a similar thing at in college where I used a raspberry pie to hook up the door handle to speakers to play “The Boys are Back in Town” whenever someone opened up our front door at the beginning of the semester.

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#29

Post by gadders »

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.

Years and years ago (like the 1970's) way before mobile phones, and phonecalls weren't particularly cheap it was common to give someone "three rings" to let them know you had arrived home safely after leaving them.

Re: The accidental genius of Yo

#30

Post by treeman79 »

Swizec wrote: post #8
sambostock wrote: post #6

Years ago, I hooked up my apartment buzzer to Yo with a raspberry pi. https://github.com/sambostock/yoorbell It was super insecure, but if you yo'd it, it would let you in, and if someone buzzed the buzzer, it would yo me. Exactly as much info as needed.

Reminds me of the saying that millenials are killing the doorbell industry by texting “here”

My doorbell broke months ago.

Eventually I decided I like it much better this way.

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