'Yo' creator: Building a business one Yo at a time

SAN FRANCISCO — The 'Yo' app may deliver a fleeting message but its creator is hoping it can be the base of a budding business.

The app, available for Apple, Android and Windows Phone devices, lets you connect and communicate using the word "yo."

From you: "Yo." To you: "Yo."

That's it.

The app blew up on social media a couple of weeks ago. It has surpassed 2 million users (1 million of them in one heady four-day period) and attracted $1.5 million in funding from investors.

Already, Stephen Colbert has mocked it, and outside developers are finding new uses for it. There's even a companion app for it on the Pebble smart watch.

Now, creator and CEO Or Arbel is setting up shop in San Francisco to expand and market the service to corporate brands and keep the Yo user base growing.

"Getting a 'Yo' basically means someone is thinking about you," he says, but it can mean many other things. In his blue-sky vision, companies such as Starbucks might embrace it. You could "Yo" your local Starbucks to order your favorite cup of Joe, and it would "Yo" you back when your drink is ready.

But it's still very early days in the life of this simple app with the silly reputation, which first launched in Apple's App Store on April 1 (that's no joke).

The background: Arbel created Yo in about eight hours while working in his native Israel with co-founder Moshe Hogeg at Mobli, a social-mobile photo and video-sharing website where Hogeg is CEO.

Hogeg asked Arbel to come up with a simple messaging tool that he could use to ping his personal assistant: Yo! Then it started to take off around the Mobli offices. High-profile tech blogger Robert Scoble stumbled upon it while visiting the Israeli start-up scene, tossing fuel onto the viral fire. Scoble has cautioned that without a solid business strategy, Yo could be the "pet rock" of 2014 but has written that "it's the stupid app I just can't delete."

Arbel has been in San Francisco for a few weeks and will remain here to build the business. In the short time since Yo has released its programming specifications to developers, a bunch of new ways to use it have popped up. For example, Arbel says InstaYo is a way to get a Yo when your favorite Instagram user posts a photo. On the popular Internet tool IFTTT (If This Then That), you can set up Yo to turn on smart lightbulbs and the like.

"People are building amazing stuff," Arbel said on a visit to the USA TODAY offices with Hogeg and few others on the Yo team.

Getting started with Yo is easy by design, but not without its limitations. You download the app, create a user name and allow the app to access your contacts. You must have someone's Yo user name to send or receive an initial Yo, which makes it a little clunky to find people who aren't on the service. Mostly, you have to resort to a, "Hey, download Yo so we can use it together," request outside of the app.

But then you're good to go.

Yo.