“The real tech story is Yik Yak is blowing up,” Josh Miller, a Facebook project manager rumoured to be working on an anonymity app for the social network, tweeted and deleted that comment recently, asking many people to wonder what the hell he was talking about.
Miller was talking about Yik Yak, an anonymous posting app that lets you see updates from people within a 2.4km radius, kind of like a digital bulletin board. If you haven’t heard of it, ask a university student about it. (Or, you know, just read this post.)
Yik Yak has been one of the top 10 most-downloaded social networking apps in the US for months, reaching #3 in early September, not coincidentally around when students returned to campus. It doesn’t have the hype that other “a school-shooting threat in Baltimore, and that’s just one of several messed up incidents. No doubt abuse will continue to be a major problem as the app grows. And getting in touch to verify what’s written on the feed will be a tricky issue for journalists. There are certainly obstacles to making Peek a bona fide news tool, but the potential is there, as long as the app can keep growing its userbase while it tries to grow up.