Yik Yak is a messaging app that promised anonymity to its users, making it once an appealing platform to millenials. But as it shifted by making its customized name handles mandatory, everything changed.
The messaging app based in Atlanta, Georgia, gained a huge popularity back in 2014. But at that time, it saw the long-term challenges for monetization as it was having anonymous users. Once the change happened, it experienced a huge user loss. In November 2016, the company tried to reverse the change, but the damage was done.
In December 2016, the company announced that it had laid off 60 percent of its employees caused by huge downturn in usage.
On April 28, 2017, Yik Yak made an announcement, saying that its app is shutting down over the weeks period.
All Yik Yak's assets were sold to Square for less than $3 million. This is a huge comedown from a once demanded $61 million in funding from venture capital firm Sequoia. At its peak in 2014, the company was valued at $400 million.
Yik Yak was founded by Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington, two graduates from Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. Yik Yak was first released in November 2013, and quickly became the 9th most downloaded social media app in the U.S. twelve months later.
One of the biggest criticisms about Yik Yak is that it inherited a big potential for cyberbullying due to its social media nature and handles. It was known to spread bullying and harassment made by users in many schools and college.
Several Chicago school districts, Norwich University in Vermont, Eanes Independent School District in Texas, Lincoln High School district in Rhode Island, New Richmond School District in Ohio,Tatum High School in New Mexico, Shawnigan Lake School in Canada and Pueblo County School District in Colorado, have all took strict action to ban Yik Yak.
Yik Yak also failed to add more features to improve experience and counter the damage as it was instead busy responding to various controversies.
The result was inevitable: Yik Yak's meteoric rise was followed by an equally dramatic collapse.
The things that differentiate Yik Yak to other social media apps, include users in exploring racial, ethnic, and sexual identities and to build a sense of community in schools and college. These had gone beyond the boundaries as they also created a divisive atmosphere of distrust and suspicion.