Our team of Silicon Valley insiders have just reported a major development in the area. Facebook has just finished a deal to acquire mobile app Yo! for approximately $5 billion in cash and stock. Yo! will remain an independently branded standalone app that’s separate from Facebook. The transaction should go through this quarter pending some standard closing procedures.
To those of new to Yo!, here are a few screenshots of what it looks like. The idea is simple. The app allows you to send a push message to your friend that says “Yo”. That’s about it. Believe it or not, Yo! ushers us into a new era of contextual messaging.
At nearly 100,000 registered users on iOS, Yo! positions itself as a key player in the contextual messaging market — Yo! plans to expand its services further by introducing features such as “Ho”, “Sup” and “Waddup”. The decision from Facebook isn’t surprising at all. It was clear that a great majority of its users flocked to Yo! within days of it releasing. Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg wanted “Messenger” to be the go-to app for sending “Yos”. This is enough justification for the buy.
We talked with Robert Scoble, one of first users of Yo! and probably it’s first critic. This is what he had to say. Yo! received $1 million in funding a few days ago, and with Robert’s influence, people flocked to the App Store to see if it was really “shocking”. The virality continues as Yo! receives thousands of signups by the hour, justifying its $5 billion dollar valuation. And with that kind of momentum, Facebook felt like it had to move — fast.
Whatever you think of the price given the fact that Yo! had no revenues, the reality is it was going to be worth whatever Mark Zuckerberg felt like paying for it. Both Google and Facebook had approached Yo! several times over the past days, but the talks clearly didn’t result in a deal. With the deal, Yo! will gain massive design and engineering resources by joining forces with Facebook, a big change after running as a famously lean company with just a handful of employees.
About Ali Gajani
Hi. I am Ali Gajani. I started Mr. Geek in early 2012 as a result of my growing enthusiasm and passion for technology. I love sharing my knowledge and helping out the community by creating useful, engaging and compelling content. If you want to write for Mr. Geek, just PM me on my Facebook profile.
