The Dumbest App on the planet simply Made Itself beautiful helpful

to start with look, it gave the look of a funny story. Or quite, it was once a shaggy dog story. When somewhat app called Yo launched last summer time, its hyper-easy functionality left most people intrigued, amused, or annoyed: All Yo does is ship and obtain messages containing most effective the word “yo.” what is the level?

as it turns out, one thing more or less actually beautiful cool.

Eight months after bewildering the tech world, Yo is getting a considerable revamp, in keeping with TechCrunch. nowadays, the startup launched the Yo retailer, a repository of branded channels that help you subscribe to notifications of your selecting. need to know when an item on Product Hunt gets 500 upvotes? Yo will let you know. need to be aware of every time there is a brand new list underneath a undeniable search time period on Craigslist? do not be disturbed about it, yo.

the new Yo successfully serves as a supply mechanism for smart, curated push notifications, which is lovely to hand in this age of notification overload. via permitting you to pick out and make a selection specific triggers for notifications, Yo gives you extra granular keep an eye on than these person apps would. sure, i will be able to get a notification every time someone likes my picture on Instagram. however what if I want to know each time my favourite photographer posts a brand new picture? Yo will let me recognize. Instagram won’t.

There are a hundred and fifty Yo channels in all: Publishers like BuzzFeed and united states of america nowadays. Social apps like Twitter and Instagram. services like IFTTT and Product Hunt. real-life stuff like discovering your parked car or monitoring a u.s.package. that you can even get a Yo of the us. There are all types of useful things that you could now do with Yo, as opposed to ahead of, when you might want to handiest do one decidedly silly thing.

any other perk: through routing these notifications throughout the Yo store, Yo eliminates the need so that you can have each of these person apps installed for your device. possibly you wish to have to maintain observe of what’s in style on Hacker news or see new videos from MTV, but you don’t essentially need to eat up house with dedicated native apps for these things. that is what that is for.

In quite a few ways, it can be reminiscent of IFTTT and its device of channels and recipes for building good judgment between apps and even units. but Yo is extra centered and no more customizable. in contrast to IFTTT, Yo is not going to can help you roll your own custom notifications. in truth, Yo is safeguarding the app’s consumer expertise through being beautiful picky about what services can get on board: best those who conform to send top of the range, rare signals or ones customers particularly requested get a spot within the Yo store. This retains one Yo source from pissing in everybody else’s pool and driving customers away.

it is not just a subject of excellent UX—one thing which is much more delicate than standard with regards to push notifications—it is a topic of existence or dying. Yo’s founder is reportedly shy about sharing precise numbers, but there isn’t a means the app has retained anything with reference to the three.5 million users it had on the height of its tech press hype spike. nonetheless, if the rest is going to construct these numbers again up, in truth being remotely helpful just might be the trick.

[via TechCrunch]