 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. 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. Is Yo, which he calls “context-based communications,” the future of messaging? “the way it affects your life is profound” 
 
 Yo is a very simple 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’s particularly popular among other start-ups like Kickstarter and Four Square. 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. — 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. 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. "If you think this is just an app that says 'Yo,' you are getting it wrong," he says. If Arbel can grow Yo into something a larger company believes is even 1 percent as valuable as WhatsApp, that’s still $190 million. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Where does Yo fit into this equation?
– 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.