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April 24, 2014

Local Social Networking App Yik Yak Gets Dough to Grow

What if there was a way for people to see what others within their city were saying around the Web? Perhaps one of the most interesting “getting people together” ideas in recent social media history is a little app called Yik Yak that does exactly that. Yik Yak, an app that engages people locally by showing them messages from others in their area, has just received a boost that could make it into tomorrow's game changer. Investors such as Vaizra Investments, DCM, and Azure Capital Partners have gathered up to provide $1.5 million in funding to the company developing the app.

The app connects users with others in their age range that live within a mile and a half from them. The app generated a lot of buzz when students at a university campus used it to gather funds for a student's cancer treatment.

The founders plan to use the investment money to improve application development (so far, reviews are showing that the app needs a little bit of work) and expand Yik Yak's user base.

Tyler Droll, CEO of Yik Yak, said, “Our goal with Yik Yk was to create an open forum for mobile users to easily communicate, or ‘Yak,’ with one another, providing a virtual bulletin board of sorts for community engagement within a specific location. This funding will not only give us the opportunity to bring our platform to more locations, but it will also help generate more features and functionalities that connect users and encourage free expression, humorous or cause-related engagement or community-building through the app.”

Yik Yak's users can post 200-character messages much like they would in Twitter (sans the lower character limit). The message will be broadcasted to users within a 1.5-mile radius. Its platform is seeing a healthy increase in its user base due to its unique model.

However, recent updates have caused the app to fall slightly out of favor due to bugs. Hopefully, with a little boost from investors, Yik Yak will become an app that works flawlessly and allows small hyper-local communities to organize in fascinating ways!




Edited by Alisen Downey


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