I love when businesses speak in down-to-earth terms, and when they recognize the importance of anonymity and choice. From Yik Yak’s blog, yesterday:
Earlier this year we introduced optional handles to help you recognize and feel closer to the other Yakkers who make your community unique and awesome. And we got so excited about how we saw some communities use them to facilitate connections and form more tightly-knit herds that we decided to make handles part of every yak or reply. The thing is, we were so focused on one side of why handles are great that we didn’t think enough about why there’s a benefit to having the choice of whether or not to show your handle.
So what happened? We made a huge change by removing the toggle button on handles, and boy did we hear from you about it – rightfully so. We heard very clearly that having the choice of whether or not to use a handle had given you the freedom to talk openly about a tough personal situation; made it ok to yak about a casual thought you’re still forming an opinion on; taken the pressure off having to always post the same type of content just because you’ve built a recognizable personality around that.
Most of all, we heard that while you like posting with a handle sometimes, by taking away that choice we were starting to break what makes Yik Yak really great and what we built this app for: helping your communities connect.
We messed up by not listening to you before making that change, and we’re sorry for that. That’s why we’re doing a couple big things, effective right now, based on what we’ve heard from you:
Read more on Yik Yak.