Atlanta Startup Yik Yak Raises $10 Million
Yik Yak is an Atlanta based app startup. They’ve created an anonymous, proximity based social network that’s primarily tapped into college campuses. Realizing that many students on college campuses may participate in the same activities and events, and many also feel freer to communicate about those activities anonymously, the team behind Yik Yak realized they were onto something.
Maturity, discretion and peer pressure are active beasts on a college campus. The hope is that as a student has aged out of high school they may not be so susceptible to peer pressure, but the truth is it can be much worse.
So here’s the scenario. Suppose you’re a student at an NCAA division 1 school. You aren’t too sure about a party so you discreetly check it out. You get there and all the hot girls and all the hot guys are at the party and maybe even a few members of your schools standout basketball team. You don’t want to be that guy who posts all this info on an Instagram or Facebook tagged to your name, but if you had a way to broadcast that info without your name, even more people would come to the party.
The exact opposite scenario would work too. Suppose you were in the choir in high school but you’re thinking you’re just a little too cool for the choir at college. You turn to Yik Yak and all the chatter is about how amazing choir practice is. You may decide to head right down there.
Those are a couple of ways Yik Yak can be used, however it’s a pretty open platform only barred by the geographic confines of your college campus.
Yik Yak Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer Brooks Buffington told Venture Beat: “On our college campus, we saw that there were a few influencers… a few people had the voice of the campus,” adding “We saw the opportunity of giving the campus its voice back. Everyone on that campus can be a part of that, not just those few,”
Before they raised the $10 million dollars led by DCM, with Azure Capital, Ren Ren, and Tim Draper also participating, the company came under harsh scrutiny.
It was reported that high school students were using the Yik Yak app to anonymously bully other students. New York Magazine reported about a Connecticut high school “brought to a halt” because students were cyberbullying other students with the app. We reported, with skepticism, back in January that students in Birmingham Alabama were also using Yik Yak for bullying.
Yik Yak quickly responded by building in functionality that geo-fenced middle and high schools out of it’s app making unavailable within the boundaries of a school.
“They didn’t have the maturity… They’re just not psychologically developed enough to handle our app,” said Buffington.
Ultimately mean students are going to use whatever technology is available to them to bully people.
Now though, Yik Yak is starting to take the form that both Buffington and co-founder Tyler Droll first imagined. It’s turning into an anonymized Twitter like social network on college campuses.
