Single-message app ‘Yo’ is what’s up with investors

SAN FRANCISCO — A messaging app that allows users to send the word “Yo” to friends has discovered newfound fame and fortune.

San Francisco-based startup Yo, which got its start in Tel Aviv and moved to California after becoming a hit in Israel, boasted new backers on Friday as reports estimated its value as high as $10 million.

Yo raised $1.5 million in an initial round of funding that included backing from Betaworks and Mashable founder Pete Cashmore, according to co-founder and chief executive Or Arbel.

“The value of this round goes far beyond the dollar amount that we received,” Arbel said in a release.

“Bringing such incredibly smart, talented, and experienced people into the Yo team at this stage is an incredible advantage that will allow us to accelerate the growth and provide more and better value to our users.”

Betaworks explained in an online post that it was pumping cash into Yo due, in part, to a fascination with the potential of simple tools for single word smartphone notifications such as “yes” or “no.”

The Yo app has been woven into communications at Betaworks, according to founder and chief executive John Borthwick.

“We Yo with co-workers alerting them that a meeting is starting; I Yo with my wife as a ‘hi’ during a busy day,” Borthwick said in an online post announcing the investment.

“I Yo with friends, without any more expectation or need than a Yo back.”

US media reports indicated that backers included founders of China-based Tencent, but Yo did not disclose the entire list of investors.

The app lets users say “Yo” to their friends, sending them a text notification accompanied by a recorded voice shouting the greeting. Arbel has insisted the deceptively simple app has a lot of potential.

“People think it’s just an app that says ‘Yo.’ But it’s really not,” Arbel told The New York Times.

“We like to call it context-based messaging. You understand by the context what is being said.”

Convinced his app has big prospects in line, he left his job as chief technology officer of stock trading platform Stox, which he helped launch last year, and moved from Tel Aviv to San Francisco to focus on Yo.

Arbel said the app could allow newspapers and blogs to notify subscribers that a new article has been published or posted, using a Yo.

Yo took advantage of World Cup frenzy by letting users sign up to get Yo notifications when goals were scored.

Reviews on Apple’s App Store were positive, but some veered into sarcasm.

“Yo cured my cancer! Yo ended world hunger, Yo also helped me find the women of my dreams because when I yo’d her for the first time she asked me if I wanted to mate and produce spawns, yo is the reason I live and the reason I wake up in the morning,” read a review featured along with a description at the App Store on Friday.

Applications available free for iOS or Android powered devices have reportedly been downloaded more than two million times and is used to fire off “yo” a similar number of times daily.

“Yo has been pushing forward at a rapid pace, focusing both on user acquisition and developing an API for businesses, brands, and other apps,” Arbel said.

source: interaksyon.com

Over a hundred billion apps will be downloaded from app stores in 2013 — Gartner

MANILA, Philippines — The mobile ‘app’ ecosystem will see strong growth in 2013 as research firm Gartner predicts that more than 100 billion apps will be downloaded from various app stores this year, up 60 percent from last year’s figures.

Majority of these apps will be free, the Gartner report said, but paid downloads will also see a surge this year as 9 billion paid apps will be installed on modern smartphones by the end of 2013.

“Free apps currently account for about 60 percent and 80 percent of the total available apps in Apple’s App Store and Google Play, respectively,” said Brian Blau, research director at Gartner. “iOS and Android app stores combined are forecast to account for 90 percent of global downloads in 2017. These app stores are still increasingly active due to richer ecosystems and large and very active developer communities.

Both Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store celebrated 50 billion downloads from their respective mobile storefronts this year, with Apple reporting as much as 800 apps being installed on iOS devices every second.

Android currently holds a majority share of the market with three in four smartphones around the world bearing Google’s mobile operating system. Apple, on the other hand, as a 13.2-percent share of the smartphone pie.

Other app stores available today include Amazon’s app store, BlackBerry World, and the Microsoft Windows Phone Store, all of which have marginal shares in the overall app store market.

Gartner said they see no signs of app movement slowing down in the next few years, but will see a gradual tapering of growth by 2017.

“We expect average monthly downloads per iOS device to decline from 4.9 in 2013 to 3.9 in 2017, while average monthly downloads per Android device will decline from 6.2 in 2013 to 5.8 in 2017. This relates back to the overall trend of users using the same apps more often rather than downloading new ones,” the research firm explained.

Despite this, revenues from these app downloads will still see marked increase in the coming years, with in-app purchases seeing a jump from 17 percent of the total $26 billion in 2013 to as high as 48 percent after four years.

Research shows that IAP contributes to a significant amount of Apple’s App Store revenue from iPhones worldwide. Other platforms have not reached such high levels as the iPhone, but analysts expect they will also see IAP contributions increase in the future.

“We see that users are not put off by the fact that they have already paid for an app, and are willing to spend more if they are happy with the experience,” Blau added. “As a result, we believe that IAP is a promising and sustainable monetization method because it encourages performance-based purchasing; that is, users only pay when they are happy with the experience, and developers have to work hard to earn the revenue through good design and performance.”

source: interaksyon.com

Facebook says app for ‘simple’ phones used by 100 million

NEW YORK CITY — US social network giant Facebook said Monday it has surpassed 100 million users a month using an application designed for “simple” mobile phones widely used in developing nations.

Launched two years ago, the “Facebook For Every Phone” app enables people to connect “no matter what kind of mobile device they use,” the company said in a statement.

“Today, millions of people in developing markets like India, Indonesia and the Philippines are relying on this technology to connect with Facebook, without having to purchase a (more expensive) smartphone,” Facebook said.


The application works on more than 3,000 different types of low-cost phones “from almost every handset manufacturer that exists today.”

The app “includes Facebook’s most popular features, such as News Feed, Messenger and Photos,” and allows first-time users to create a new account and find old friends.

As of late March, Facebook reported having 751 million customers using accessing their site on mobile devices, up a whopping 54 percent from one year earlier.

source: interaksyon.com

Nokia feels out tattoos that vibrate with incoming calls

SAN FRANCISCO — Mobile phone maker Nokia is seeking a US patent for tattoos that vibrate to let people know when they have calls on their mobile phones.

Technology laid out in a patent application available online Wednesday would enable tattoos to receive magnetic waves emitted by mobile phones.

Waves would trigger tattoos to generate “perceivable stimulus” to alert them to calls, messages, or batteries running low.

“The perceivable stimulus may comprise vibration, a vibration on the image on a user’s skin, for example,” according to the application filed with the US Patent Office late last year.

The application described an ink enhanced with magnetic compounds used to make visible or invisible images “attached to the skin.”

Sensations caused by tattoos, permanent or temporary, could be customized depending on the content, suggesting vibrations could vary in intensity and timing depending on who was calling or whether it was a text message.

“The magnetic field, when detected by the apparatus, will cause a different effect based on its characteristics,” the patent application read.

“For example, the magnetic field may cause vibration of one short pulse, multiple short pulses, few long pulses, mixture of short and long pulses, strong pulses, weak pulses, and so on.”

People would be able to recharge tattoos using strong magnets, according to the application.

source: interaksyon.com