Yik Yak Raises another $62 Million For Anonymous Messaging App

As discussed in class this week, Yik Yak has recently raised $62 million in their latest round of financing. This is the third round of venture capital fundraising in the past seven months, bringing their total funding to nearly $73 million. This is extremely promising for a start-up that was only introduced a year ago, especially as funders include Jim Goetz, who also recently invested in WhatsApp when they themselves were relatively unknown in 2011. Since then, we all know that WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook earlier this year for over $21 billion.

Yik Yak is an anonymous messaging app that allows individuals to create and view posts from those that are within a 1.5 mile radius, and has been gaining popularity at high schools and college campuses across the country. This proximity-based requirement is what differentiates the apps from similar platforms such as PostSecret and Whisper that offer the sharing of messages to anyone using the app, regardless of location. Though there was quite a bit of backlash a few months ago regarding the opportunities these anonymous platforms open up to cyberbullying (including a piece written for The Huffington Post on “Why Your College Campus Should Ban Bullying”, Yik Yak claims to use geofencing to eliminate this, essentially “fencing off” certain areas such as middle and high schools, and disabling the app in those specified locations. 

For those of you, like myself, who are completely new to the Yik Yak world, here's some terms you should know:

• Yak: A single message that is posted (essentially an anonymous Tweet).
• Yakarma: A numerical score that measures the "success" of a user. The score fluctuates based on the number of up/down votes, replies and comments (kind of like your Klout Score, for people who remember when that was the next big thing).
• Upvote/Downvote: User rankings. Yaks can receive unlimited upvotes, but only 5 downvotes before it is permanently deleted from Yik Yak.
• Peek: This feature gives you the ability to anonymously view other Yik Yak community feeds. Essentially, you can peek into what's going on at Columbia University even if you're not within the 1.5 mile radius, but you don't have the ability to vote or post there yourself. You can peek into any college or city across the world. 
• New/Hot Tabs: While the app defaults to showing the newest Yak on top, you can toggle this setting to show the "hottest" Yak (aka the one with the most number of upvotes in the past hour).

Learn a little more about the Yik Yak platform and their most recent round of funding. 

What do you think? Are anonymous messaging sites here to stay, or are they just the newest fad that's sure to pass?