text: #techFT Archived 
   
   This blog will no longer be updated. View our latest Technology news on the new FT.com #techFT is your free daily newsletter summarising all you need to know on the latest news and trends in technology, digital media and telecoms. It provides sharp commentary and analysis and highlights the best FT writing from correspondents around the world, as well as linking to outstanding coverage around the world. ||||| Moshe Hogeg had a problem: He was tired of sending countless text messages to his assistant, asking her to come into the room. So Hogeg, CEO of the photo and video sharing service Mobli, asked Or Arbel, a former iOS designer at the company, to create a solution. 
   
   What Hogeg wanted, as Arbel recalls, was an app that had "one big button and when I tap it, it sends her a notification and she knows that I need her." Arbel's response was less than enthusiastic at first: "I told him it will take me two hours to do it, but I’m not going to do it, because it's a silly idea." 
   
   Arbel was wrong about two things: He did end up doing it. And it took him eight hours to build the initial version, not two. 
   
   The result was Yo, an app that lets users say "yo" to their contacts. If you're feeling particularly chatty, you can double tap a contact's name to say "YoYo." Those are the only ways to communicate within the app. 
   
   The free app launched quietly in April, but received some mainstream attention on Wednesday after the Financial Times wrote it up. The idea of an app dedicated to simply saying "yo" would likely have been easy enough to poke fun at, but the article noted that investors had contributed $1 million toward the app. That detail lit a fire on Twitter. 
   
   Hopefully Yo will learn from Instagrm, and hold out. RT @jyarow: Facebook should buy Yo for $2 billion. — Joseph Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) June 18, 2014 
   
   I honestly can’t tell if this is a joke or not http://t.co/HfANMjrwWp — Matt O'Brien (@ObsoleteDogma) June 18, 2014 
   
   facebook devs start working on an app called 'hey' in 3...2... — ▵ Jenna Wortham ▵ (@jennydeluxe) June 18, 2014 
   
   New app idea: Like Yo, but not stupid — delrayser (@delrayser) June 18, 2014 
   
   After initially greeting me on the phone — yes, he said "yo" — Arbel quickly launched into an explanation of what he believed these and other commenters were missing. 
   
   "People don’t get it. They think that it's just an app that says 'Yo,'" he told Mashable. "What we see is a whole new way to get notifications — life notifications — from friends, family..." 
   
   One use case, he says, is that people can add "WorldCup" on Yo and receive a "yo" every time a goal is scored in a soccer match. Another use case his team is working on is adding a Yo button that can be embedded on blogs and be used to notify readers — with a message from the blog reading "yo" — that a new story has published. 
   
   According to Arbel, "one guy" uses the app to show his girlfriend that he's thinking of her throughout the day. "His girlfriend is always complaining that he doesn't text her during the day," Arbel explains. Upon further questioning, that user turned out to be Hogeg, the Mobli CEO who pushed for the idea in the first place. 
   
   "If you think this is just an app that says 'Yo,' you are getting it wrong," he says. "It's a new way to get lightweight, non-intrusive notifications. We are here to cut through the noise. We like to call it context-based messaging." 
   
   In short, it's like a cross between Facebook's original Poke button, Foursquare's new Swarm app, an RSS reader and WhatsApp without so many words. 
   
   We could probably write something about how this app somehow epitomizes the trend toward frictionless communication, or scoff at the idea of investors throwing money at any app that somehow fits into the social/mobile category. Or we could just point out the irony that an app which lets you send a two-letter word over and over is somehow getting more buzz today than Facebook's new messaging app, Slingshot. 
   
   But for now, we'll just say "yo." 
   
   You can download the app on iOS and Android. ||||| Photo 
   
   Some technology start-ups want to cure the world’s ills. Others want to disrupt major industries. One app has a strategy that amounts to a single word. 
   
   Yo. 
   
   The app, called Yo, lets people say “Yo” to their friends. Tap a name on the app’s list of contacts, and a text notification saying “Yo” pops up on the recipient’s smartphone, along with a recorded voice shouting the syllable. 
   
   The idea is simple. It may turn out to be a dud. But $1 million has already been staked on its success. 
   
   Or Arbel, the chief executive of Yo, said on Wednesday that he had raised that seven-figure sum from a group of angel investors led by Moshe Hogeg, the chief executive of an image-sharing app called Mobli. Yo has so much potential, Mr. Arbel said, that last week he left his job as the chief technology officer of Stox, a stock trading platform he helped start last year, and moved to San Francisco from Tel Aviv to work on Yo full-time. 
   
   “People think it’s just an app that says ‘Yo.’ But it’s really not,” Mr. Arbel said. “We like to call it context-based messaging. You understand by the context what is being said.” 
   
   Mr. Arbel has big plans for Yo. One possible use, he said, would be for newspapers and blogs to send Yo’s to subscribers (rather, to Yo them) when a new article is published. 
   
   Already, Yo is piggybacking on the mania for the World Cup. Anyone who sends a Yo to “WORLDCUP” will get Yo notifications whenever a goal is scored. How does the company do it? Simple: One of its four part-time employees is responsible for watching every World Cup game. 
   
   Mr. Arbel insists that this is useful information. The Yo, he said, can prompt people to look at a nearby screen to check out the action. 
   
   The simplicity is the whole point. 
   
   “It’s a lightweight, nonintrusive way to communicate with your friends and family and also things that interest you,” Mr. Arbel said. 
   
   The idea came from Mr. Hogeg, who asked Mr. Arbel a few months ago to create an app whose sole purpose would be to notify Mr. Hogeg’s personal assistant when Mr. Hogeg wanted to see her in his office. Mr. Arbel figured it would be easy enough to build, but said he didn’t have time. 
   
   Mr. Hogeg was persistent. But Mr. Arbel dismissed the idea. “I said, ‘No, it’s really stupid. Other people can’t use it. How many people in the world have a personal assistant?’ ” 
   
   “Then, a day later, I thought about this app,” Mr. Arbel said. “And I remembered that I have a friend in L.A., and he and I communicate with text messages that mean nothing.” 
   
   “And then it hit me,” he said. 
   
   After eight hours of work, Yo was born. It debuted on Apple’s app store in April. Mr. Arbel estimated that almost four million Yo’s have been sent to date. 
   
   A Yo can mean different things. Mr. Arbel said he would send a Yo to a business partner to signify “good morning.” 
   
   It can also have a more personal connotation. Mr. Arbel recalled that Mr. Hogeg’s wife once complained that her husband wasn’t texting her enough to say “I love you.” 
   
   “He started Yo-ing her in the middle in the day, and then she knows he’s thinking about her,” Mr. Arbel said. “So she doesn’t bother him any more.” 
   
   The financing round was reported earlier by The Financial Times. 
   
   Among the technophiles and journalists, Yo was, at least momentarily, a phenomenon on Twitter. 
   
   There were also some questions, with a hint of frustration. 
   
   why is my timeline full of yo — Jared Keller (@jaredbkeller) 18 Jun 14 
   
   What are you turkeys talking about today? What is this Yo thing? — Ben White (@morningmoneyben) 18 Jun 14 
   
   Some hoped Yo would just go away. 
   
   I just got my first Yo, from @TheStalwart. It’s already annoying. — Felix Salmon (@felixsalmon) 18 Jun 14 
   
   Just gonna ignore this Yo thing and hope it goes away. — Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) 18 Jun 14 
   
   Okay I have a new app where you tap on a friend’s name and it just leaves them alone, get in on my Series A at a $50mm valuation. — Matt Levine (@matt_levine) 18 Jun 14 ||||| Economy People Invested $1 Million In An App That Just Says ‘Yo’ CREDIT: 
   
   It only took 8 hours to build the app, and the only thing it does is allow you to send the word ‘Yo’ to your friends. To many, it seems like a joke. But its inventor, Or Arbel, is totally serious. 
   
   Arbel, who built the app three months ago, has quit his job and moved halfway around the world — from his native Israel to San Francisco — to work on Yo full time. He’s opening an office, hiring staff and seeking “strategic partners.” And oh yeah: He’s already raised $1 million from investors. 
   
   So is Arbel right? Is Yo, which he calls “context-based communications,” the future of messaging? Or is investor interest in Yo an unmistakable sign that we are in the midst of another internet bubble? 
   
   “the way it affects your life is profound” 
   
   Yo is a very simple app. It allows you to send a push notification to anyone else with the app. All of those notifications say the same thing: “Yo.” Arbel says that “you usually understand what the Yo means based on who you get it from and when you get it.” According to Arbel, once you start using Yo “the way it affects your life is profound.” He noted that many of the reviews of Yo in the app store say things like “Yo changed my life.” 
   
   Some of these reviews, however, do seem a bit sarcastic: “Not just a means of simple but effective communication, Yo is a way of life,” one review says. “Since downloading Yo, all my relationships have improved and I’ve regrown most of my hair.” 
   
   Yo was launched in the App Store on April Fool’s Day of this year. (It was initially rejected by Apple because they thought the App wasn’t finished yet.) It took off when tech evangelist Robert Scoble called it “the stupidest but most addicting app ever.” Thus far, it has attracted over 50,000 users who have sent about 4 million Yos. It’s particularly popular among other start-ups like Kickstarter and Four Square. Once it gets into an office, Arbel says, “it goes viral.” 
   
   Why not just send the word “Yo” using an existing messaging app? Arbel says the primary benefit is efficiency. With WhatsApp, an extremely popular messaging app that allows you to send words of your choosing, it takes 11 taps to send a Yo. With the Yo app, it only takes two taps. 
   
   The comparison to WhatsApp also may point to Arbel’s larger strategy. In February, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion, even though the company’s revenue is negligible. Arbel says that anyone who uses WhatsApp will also want Yo. If Arbel can grow Yo into something a larger company believes is even 1 percent as valuable as WhatsApp, that’s still $190 million. 
   
   Some analysts believe the WhatsApp sale and the flood of venture capital seeking out the next big thing represents a new tech bubble. Hedge fund manager David Einhorn, speaking to the Los Angeles Times recently, said “[t]here is a clear consensus that we are witnessing our second tech bubble in 15 years. What is uncertain is how much further the bubble can expand, and what might pop it.” 
   
   “We do have some users who don’t get it and think it’s a joke” 
   
   During the last tech bubble, in 2000, the Nasdaq Index — which features many technology stocks — lost nearly 80 percent of its value and “Silicon Valley saw 200,000 jobs evaporate overnight.” In the first quarter of 2014 “venture capitalists invested $9.5 billion in 951 U.S. companies,” a level not seen since the last bust. 
   
   Many people within the tech industry, however, remain bullish. The internet is much more mature than at the turn of the century, the smartphone plays a central role in modern life, and people much more willing to spend money to enhance their online experience. 
   
   So how do you convince investors that there is money to be made in the Yo-delivery business? Arbel is working on developing an API that will allow him to “partner with brands.” In our Yo-enhanced future you would get Yos from “things that interest you.” When the Gap has a sale, for example, it would send you a Yo. When your friend’s plane lands, Delta will send you a Yo. Arbel is particularly excited about the prospect of getting a Yo into Starbucks. When your order is ready, Starbucks could send you a Yo. 
   
   “Shouting your name is old fashioned,” he says. 
   
   The first $1 million has come from group of investors associated with Moshe Hogeg, the CEO a social network similar to Instagram, Mobli, where Arbel worked for two years. (He initially created the app at the request of Hogeg, who wanted an easy want to tell his personal assistant he needed to talk to her.) Arbel said he’d like to raise some more money from “strategic partners.” 
   
   One thing that Arbel won’t be doing is adding more features. He believes that simplicity is the key to its success. (There are some hidden features, or “Easter eggs,” in the app. You can double tap someone’s name to send a “YoYo.” And adding a plus sign between usernames sends Yos to a group.) The simplicity also provides some benefits to users. Unlike most other messaging apps, Yo doesn’t collect any personal information from users. In comparison to photo messaging apps like SnapChat, it’s hard for kids to get into trouble using Yo. You cannot sext on it. 
   
   “We do have some users who don’t get it and think it’s a joke,” Arbel admits. He thinks that even if users initially download the app because they think its funny, they’ll keep using it because it will “change their everyday life.” He describes the perception of Yo as a joke as a “problem we need to solve.” 
   
   The larger problem is whether an economy built on seven-figure investments in Apps like Yo is sustainable. If Arbel can convince sophisticated investors that Yo already merits a $1 million investment, maybe he is onto something. Or maybe the potential of Yo is not in the product itself, but on the ability in a frenzied marketplace to quickly flip Yo to another company for a profit and move onto the next app. It was too many of those kinds of transactions — divorced from revenue or value of the consumer — that caused the entire system to crash at the turn of the century. 
   
   Where does Yo fit into this equation? We’ll need to wait and see. Until then, Arbel has been waiting for a Yo when this piece gets published.
target: – Have you been Yo'd yet? If the question makes no sense, you've missed the buzz around a new app called Yo that allows people to send a message of "Yo" to their friends. That's it. (Unless you double-tap the name and make it "YoYo." Before laughing it off, note that the creators are dead serious about its potential and have already raised $1 million from investors led by Mobli CEO Moshe Hogeg, as the Financial Times reported in the story that set off a flurry of coverage. Inventor Or Arbel tells ThinkProgress that the promise of Yo centers around what he calls "context-based communications." Users generally understand what the Yo means based on who sends it and when it arrives. (Yeah, the app is drawing its fair share of ridicule.) "People don’t get it," Arbel tells Mashable. "They think that it's just an app that says 'Yo.' What we see is a whole new way to get notifications—life notifications—from friends, family." Or from businesses: Arbel floats the idea of Starbucks customers getting a Yo when their drink is ready. And the New York Times notes that users can get a Yo every time a goal is scored in the World Cup—thanks to a part-time employee who is charged with watching every game. All the stories relay the genesis of the idea: Hogeg asked Arbel for a simple app that would allow him to summon his personal assistant with the press of a button. After eight hours of work, Yo was born.