Yik Yak
Anonymous, local, and impossible to moderate
Yik Yak let you post anonymously to everyone within about five miles, which made it explosive on American college campuses from 2013 and briefly worth $400 million. Harassment scandals and moderation fixes killed the growth; it shut down in May 2017, and a new owner relaunched it in 2021.
Timeline [edit]
- 2013
-
November 2013
Launch
Yik Yak launches
Anonymous posting to everyone within about five miles.
- 2014
-
November 2014
Funding
$73.5 million at a reported $400 million valuation
Sequoia leads as the app tops campus charts.
- 2015
-
2015
Incident
Harassment and threat scandals
Racist threats, bomb hoaxes and targeted abuse lead to campus bans.
- 2016
-
August 2016
Feature
Handles and profiles arrive
The moderation fix removes the anonymity the app was built on.
- 2017
-
28 April 2017
Shutdown announced
Shutdown announced
Square pays about $1 million for the engineers.
-
5 May 2017
Shutdown
Yik Yak closes
Downloads had fallen roughly 76% in a year.
- 2021
-
16 August 2021
Revival
Relaunched by new owners
Same premise, stricter community rules.
How it looked [edit]
The site through time
Browse yikyak.com as it was, via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:
Ownership [edit]
Key figures [edit]
| Metric | Value | As of | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valuation (USD) ▲ | $400M | November 2014 | Reported Reported valuation at the Sequoia round |
Confirmed official figures · Reported media, cites a source · Estimated analyst or our estimate
Why it shut down [edit]
Official line: Yik Yak shut down in May 2017 after downloads collapsed and Square bought its engineering team for about $1 million; a new owner relaunched the app in August 2021.
Our analysis: Anonymity plus a five-mile radius produced exactly what you would predict on a college campus: some genuinely useful local chatter, and a great deal of bullying, racist threats and bomb hoaxes. Every fix that made moderation possible (handles, geofences around schools) removed the thing that made it popular.
History [edit]
The campus feed
Two fraternity brothers at Furman University launched Yik Yak in late 2013 with a deceptively small idea: an anonymous feed of everyone posting within roughly a five-mile radius, voted up and down. On a university campus, that is a perfect product. Everyone shares the same jokes, the same lectures, the same terrible dining hall, and nobody has to attach their name.
It spread across American colleges at astonishing speed, raised $73.5 million from Sequoia at a reported $400 million valuation in 2014, and topped the app charts.
Anonymity's bill comes due
Then the other consequences arrived: targeted harassment of named students and professors, racist threats that shut down campuses, bomb hoaxes that brought in the FBI, and a wave of universities banning it on their networks. Yik Yak responded with geofences around high schools, then in 2016 with optional handles and profiles, which killed the anonymity the whole product was built on. Downloads fell by roughly 76% in a year.
In April 2017 the founders announced the end; Square paid about $1 million for the engineering team, and the app closed in early May 2017. In August 2021 new owners relaunched Yik Yak under the same name and premise, with stricter rules, so the record here is a revival rather than a burial.
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Sources [edit]
- Yik Yak shuts down after Square paid $1 million for its engineers TechCrunch 28 April 2017 [archived]
- Yik Yak, The Anonymous App That Tested Free Speech, Is Back NPR 17 August 2021 [archived]
Last verified: 11 August 2026. Spotted an error? Suggest an edit (corrections with sources are reviewed and applied).