YikYak is back again. And that was after it was stopped in 2017 after it failed to deal with the problems it faced at the time.
The platform announced its return again via Twitter. It will return as an iOS app only for the time being. The platform provided a very different social networking experience, as it relied on anonymity.
The platform was founded in 2013 by Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington students at Furman University of South Carolina.
The platform allows its users to create conversational topics, which bears the name Yaks. But these themes are only visible to users within a five mile radius. That is, it is a communication platform for people who are close to each other.
The primary purpose of creating the platform was to allow undergraduates to gossip about each other. Since it was a social media platform first and foremost, it had a feature called Yakarama. It is a score that each user has based on how much other users like their topics and responses.
Later, the app started allowing its users to view and interact with Yaks, even if they were far away from them. Later in 2016, users were allowed to edit their profiles and add a profile about them. They also hide their identities using symbolic information.
Since the network was allowing its users to reveal their identity, this allowed them to share racist and offensive content. In addition to using the platform to bully others, the problems increased after a loophole was found in the application that allows revealing the identity of its users.
Due to the problems caused by the app, it lost 76% of its users by 2016. YikYak took the decision to shut down the app in April 2017.
Today, the company announced the return of its iOS app, as previously mentioned, with promises to release an Android version quickly. No one knows how users will accept the return of the application, and whether users who did not try it before closing it will be interested in it.
The app did not disclose how it resisted offensive or harmful content. However, Yaks with more than 5 negative votes will be removed automatically. There is no doubt that all social media platforms have major problems managing the content posted by their users, and YikYak is no exception.
The application will present its main features again. It is anonymity and reliance on geographic location. Plus, it's only available in the US at the moment.
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