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Square Said To Acquire Team From Struggling Social App Yik Yak (bloomberg.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the divide-and-conquer dept.

According to Bloomberg, Square has acquired the engineering team of Yik Yak for "less than $3 million." From the report: The payments processor paid less than $3 million for between five and ten of Yik Yak's engineers, according to the person. Atlanta-based Yik Yak's Chief Executive Officer Tyler Droll will not join Square, the person added, asking not to be identified talking about a private matter. Atlanta-based Yik Yak, which started in 2013, created a smartphone app that allowed people to contribute to anonymous chat groups in a narrow geographical radius -- like college campuses.

5 of 15 comments (clear)

  1. Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Those are some expensive slaves.

    1. Re:Wow by supremebob · · Score: 1

      Yeah... I'm hoping that most of that money goes to the developers and not the CEO of Yik Yak. I doubt the dev team is going to stick around unless they got some huge signing bonuses.

      That said, I'm kind of glad that Yik Yak going away. It was a prime example of the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, and basically created modern day minority hate groups on college campuses:

      https://www.quora.com/What-is-...

      https://gimletmedia.com/episod...

    2. Re:Wow by ctilsie242 · · Score: 1

      Yik Yak had some merit, as there were some interesting conversations on there, but because it was "anonymous" at first, it just invited all the trolls.

      What killed it for me was the fact that the app grabbed as much data as possible from your phone to "individualize" it... i.e. de-anonymize the user.

  2. Failure by speedplane · · Score: 1

    $3M for a failed company? Doesn't seem fair.

    --
    Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
  3. Re:Yik Yak was useless garbage anyway by speedplane · · Score: 1

    Yik Yak was always trash.

    Apparently three million dollar trash.

    --
    Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates