Yo App Goes From Seriously Dumb to Surprisingly Useful Yo just reinvented itself as a killer content clearinghouse.

By Kim Lachance Shandrow

Opinions expressed by BIZ Experiences contributors are their own.

Yo

Yo's all grown up, yo. The absurd smash-hit app that once only allowed users to send friends the word "yo" just went from useless to useful, and it's not a joke.

Now the free social-networking app -- originally launched by San Francisco engineer Or Arbel as a joke last April Fool's Day -- finally does a lot more than send monosyllabic salutations. It's been redesigned to be a content notification clearinghouse, tipping users off to new videos, images and articles from an impressive mix of 150 partner websites.

Related: New Messaging App 'Tap' Aims to Be Even Simpler Than 'Yo'

To hook up to Yo's steady fresh content drip, users log into the app as they normally would, then subscribe to notifications or "Yos" from the content channels they like from the app's new Yo Store lineup.

Yo content channels are lumped into 10 basic categories including "productivity," "business," "news" and the all-important "fun." Yo-ers can plug into LOL-worthy bits from the lighter side of the Internet -- Lil Bub, the web's most famous feline, Funny Or Die and Cheezburger -- to news bursts from mainstream media outlets like BuzzFeed, USA Today and Daily Mail.

Related: Viral App 'Yo' Hires Its Hacker

Feening for Beyonce's latest selfie-riffic Instagram posts? There's a Yo for that, too. Need to know Bitcoin's current price? Coinbase has yo covered. So how about it, would you give Yo a second chance now that it's not total brain drivel?

Related: The 'Yo' Explosion Comes Full Circle: Viral App Gets Hacked
Kim Lachance Shandrow

Former West Coast Editor

Kim Lachance Shandrow is the former West Coast editor at BIZ Experiences.com. Previously, she was a commerce columnist at Los Angeles CityBeat, a news producer at MSNBC and KNBC in Los Angeles and a frequent contributor to the Los Angeles Times. She has also written for Government Technology magazine, LA Yoga magazine, the Lowell Sun newspaper, HealthCentral.com, PsychCentral.com and the former U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Coop. Follow her on Twitter at @Lashandrow. You can also follow her on Facebook here. 

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