Product Decision #11: Yik Yak’s Careful Pivot Away from Anonymity

This is #11 in a collection of posts highlighting decisions made in tech to build and grow products.

Product Decision

After two and half years of thriving as a college-focused anonymous social network, Yik Yak found itself at a crossroads: how to go from a novelty app to a sustainable business in the post-Whisper/Secret era. As a first step, they introduced user “handles” that could be optionally connected to a user’s specific post. With the latest update, Yik Yak is going one step further in that direction by linking a user’s activity to “handles” as well. A new “Explore” tab now makes it possible for Yik Yak’s hyper-local community to engage on particular topics or interests. This opens the path for users to slowly ease into the idea of shedding anonymity and Yik Yak to better identify their user base.

Details

A screenshot of the newly designed ‘Explore’ tab:

More from The Verge:

The result feels much more like a chat app than the Yik Yak of old, which served as a kind of (anonymous) community bulletin board for discussing in-jokes and campus events. Droll and his co-founder, Brooks Buffington, positioned the new version of Yik Yak as a way to help its users feel more connected to the world around them. But it’s also an acknowledgement of what founders of social networks have come to accept as a law of gravity: apps that don’t require users to establish a persistent identity are doomed to fail.

Read the full article here.

Have you tried something similar at your company? If so, share your results in the comments.