Yubo

Yubo is a French social networking app designed to "meet new people" and create a sense of community.[3] It was launched by TWELVE APP in 2015 and is available on iOS and Android. Geared towards teenagers and young adults aged 13 to 25, the app allows users to create video livestreams with up to 10 friends. The app has 40 million users worldwide.

Yubo
App icon seen on iOS
Developer(s)Twelve APP
Operating systemiOS[1] & Android[2]
Available in8 languages
List of languages
English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Norwegian, Dutch, Finnish and Swedish
Websiteyubo.live/en

History

Yubo was created by Sacha Lazimi, Jérémie Aouate and Arthur Patora when they were engineering students at CentraleSupélec Graduate school of the Paris-Saclay University and Télécom Paris.[4] Formerly known as Yellow, it was launched in 2015.[5][6] According to the founders, the app seeks to create a space for "socializing online" and to "facilitate communication between people all over the world who share mutual interests."[7]

In December 2019, the app raised $12.3 million (€11.2 million) in a funding round led by French private equity firms like Iris Capital, Idinvest Partners, Alven, Sweet Capital and Village Global.[8][9] The funds will be used to develop its technology and expand its global user base.[8]

Between 2015 and December 2019, app users have created an estimated 2 billion friendships, along with exchanging more than 10 billion messages and launching 30 million livestreams.[10]

In 2019, the startup has generated $10 million in revenue.[10]

In 2020, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, Yubo recorded a significant rise in use due to quarantined teenagers, with 350% increase in time spent in video discussion groups. And Yubo doubled the number of new daily signups, which reached 30,000 per day in mid-April. In October 2020, the app had 40 million users worldwide, 60 % of whom are Americans and Canadians.[11][12][13]

In September 2020, Yubo established its U.S. headquarters in Jacksonville, Florida.[14] At the same time, Yubo opened a new office in London.[13][15] In November 2020, Yubo carries out a new fundraising, raising $47,5 million (€40 million) from its historical investors and a new entrant, Gaia Capital Partner. The announced objective is in particular to strengthen moderation and develop the Asian market.[16][17] In addition, Jerry Murdock, co-founder of Insight Partners who invested in Twitter and Snapchat, joins the board of directors of Yubo.[18][17]

Features

Core functionality

Live streaming video is one of the main features of the app. Each session can host up to ten streamers with an unlimited number of viewers. Streamers can only join a session room if they are invited by another streamer or if they create it. Viewers can send comments to interact with the streamers. Viewers and streamers can become friends. The app also offers a swiping feature to swipe on other people profiles with similar age and messaging features. Users can choose to see only profiles with specific location, or specific gender.[19][11] Unlike many social networks that preceded Yubo, Yubo does not offer a "like" function on its app, and is not focused on "followers" either.[20][10] Yubo feels like an internet forum,[3] a place where users can socialize in a group setting, and like in "real life",[11][21] what is the goal of the app sought by its designers.[11][20]

Communities

Yubo consists of two communities, one for young people aged 13-17 and an adult community for people aged 18 and over. Members of one community can only interact with other people in their group and cannot communicate with anyone of the opposite community for safety reasons and child protection.[19][22]

Verified Profiles

The app uses face-recognition and age-estimation technology on every photo uploaded during sign up. The aim is to detect if a user is under 13 or if an adult has given a wrong age. Moreover, Yubo scans Google to see if user has collected a photo on internet to feed his profile, and every message is scanned in real time to identify problems. Flagged accounts have to download another app called Yoti to get their age verified.[7][23] Verified users are marked with a yellow badge on their profile.

Criticism about security

Following concerns about the app's safety, harassment, nudity and incidents between minors and adults,[24][25][26][27] Yubo took various measures. Yubo entered into a partnership with Yoti in February 2019 to use their age estimation technology to analyze faces and estimate how old users are. The company claimed it has already checked more than 22 million profile pictures and removed a "few thousand" profiles belonging to under-13s as a result.[28][23] Safety advocates and governments have supported Yubo's efforts to place safeguards on the app, such as by creating a proactive "engage and educate" approach for their community, a mix between AI and human moderators, banning sexually explicit profile content and auto-blocking fake profiles.[29][30][31][32]

In 2018, in Australia, Yubo join the eSafety Commissioner's Tier 1 social media scheme for resolving cyberbullying. Autralian eSafety Commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, declares : "I applaud Yubo for extensively reworking its safety features to make its platform safer for teens. Altering its age restrictions, improving its real identity policy, setting clear policies around inappropriate content and cyberbullying, and giving users the ability to turn location data off demonstrates that Yubo is taking user safety seriously".[29]

In 2020, Yubo scan every video stream, which is shut down if algorithms detects nudity.[14] In February 2020 in the United Kingdom, an independent report on child sexual abuse (Independent inquiry into child sexual abuse) estimates that "the value of human moderation is evident from the success achieved by the social network Yubo, whose moderators interrupt livestreams to tell underage users to put their clothes on".[33]

Partnership

The company has established partnerships in several countries with associations engaged in the fight against online harassment and child protection.[25]

In April 2020, Yubo announced a partnership with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), an American NGO dedicated to the search for missing children : Yubo will share data in the event of "suspected illegal activity involving minors". And the NCMEC participates in the "Safety Board" of the social network, a committee of ten international experts in cybersecurity and child protection.[25][34]

Economic model

There is no advertising on the app. Yubo was inspired by video games, where users agree to spend a little to get in-app upgrades. Yubo offers for sale some items which allows for example to give more visibility to the owner's profile. These small purchases are called micro-transactions.[20][3]

See also

References
  1. "Yubo: Make real friends live". App Store. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
  2. "Yubo – Livestream, chat, joue, fais-toi des amis". App Store. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
  3. "Yubo is a social network about socializing". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2020-04-16.
  4. "Sacha Lazimi (Yubo) : la social discovery à la française". Planete Business (in French). 2020-04-06. Retrieved 2020-11-12.
  5. "Yubo, l'application pour ados qui inquiète les parents". www.cnews.fr (in French). Retrieved 2020-04-16.
  6. "Yubo lève 11 millions pour développer sa plateforme pour la génération Z". Challenges (in French). Retrieved 2020-04-16.
  7. Bindley, Katherine (2020-02-24). "Don't Talk to Strangers? These Apps Encourage It". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2020-04-16.
  8. "#Yubo raises the stakes for established social media". EU Reporter. 2019-12-12. Retrieved 2020-04-16.
  9. Tucker, Charlotte (2019-12-12). "Paris-based Yubo, the live video platform for Gen Z, snaps up €11 million to expand globally". EU-Startups. Retrieved 2020-04-16.
  10. "Yubo raises $12.3 million for its social app for teens". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2020-04-16.
  11. Bosilkovski, Igor (2020-04-18). "Social Platform For Teens Yubo Triples Its Daily New Users Amid The Coronavirus Crisis". Forbes. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
  12. "Comment Yubo a réussi à s'expatrier aux États-Unis en restant si discret en France". Maddyness - Le Magazine sur l’actualité des Startups Françaises (in French). 2020-10-14. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
  13. Guihéneuf, Léna (2020-10-09). "Le réseau social français Yubo s'implante à Londres". French Morning London (in French). Retrieved 2020-11-13.
  14. Gibbons, Timothy (28 September 2020). "French social media app Yubo sets up U.S. headquarters in Jacksonville". Jacksonville Business Journal. Retrieved 30 September 2020.
  15. "Yubo, the Leading Social Space for Gen Z, Opens New London HQ". MarTech Series. 2020-09-16. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
  16. "Yubo, le réseau social de la génération Z, lève 40 millions d'euros". Le Monde.fr (in French). 2020-11-18. Retrieved 2020-11-27.
  17. Rauline, Nicolas (2020-11-18). "Yubo, le réseau social qui concurrence les Américains sur leur terrain". Les Echos Executives (in French). Retrieved 2020-11-27.
  18. "Yubo : le nouveau grand réseau social français tendance chez les jeunes ?". Siècle Digital (in French). 2020-11-19. Retrieved 2020-11-27.
  19. "The Yubo social app". Internet Matters. 2018-03-16. Archived from the original on 2020-04-03. Retrieved 2020-04-16.
  20. Waters, Michael (2020-09-30). "Can you fund a social media company like a video game?". The Hustle. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
  21. "Sacha Lazimi : « La cible de Yubo, c'est la génération Z ! »". Petit Journal. 2020-11-08.
  22. https://support.yubo.live/hc/en-us/articles/115003788591-Why-do-you-have-separate-communities-for-13-to-18-year-olds-and-adults-
  23. "Teen social media app uses facial recognition to check users' ages". www.telegraph.co.uk. 28 April 2019. Retrieved 28 April 2019.
  24. O'Brien, Carl. "Teens using Yubo may be at risk – study". The Irish Times. Retrieved 2020-04-16.
  25. "Yubo ne veut plus qu'on l'appelle "le Tinder des adolescents"". RTL.fr (in French). 2019-12-12. Retrieved 2020-11-15.
  26. Signoret, Perrine (2019-12-12). "On a testé Yubo, l'appli française de rencontres « amicales » utilisée par 25 millions de jeunes". Numerama (in French). Retrieved 2020-11-15.
  27. "Man accused of sexually exploiting 12-year-old he met on Yubo app". Cincinnati.com. Retrieved 2020-04-16.
  28. "Using AI for good with Yubo". www.yoti.com. 5 February 2019. Retrieved 5 February 2019.
  29. "Roblox and Yubo join Australian efforts to tackle cyberbullying | Office of the eSafety Commissioner". web.archive.org. 2018-08-14. Retrieved 2020-11-15.
  30. "Everything Parents Need To Know About Yubo - The Tinder for Teens App!". Mobicip. Retrieved 2020-04-16.
  31. Baguette, Rude (2019-09-27). "YUBO: "We set limits and make users accountable for their behaviour"". Rude Baguette. Retrieved 2020-04-16.
  32. says, Online Safety Briefing: Term 1 2017-18 #eSafety | Kent Online Safety Blog (2017-08-08). "Yellow app: Signs of smarter digital safety". NetFamilyNews.org. Retrieved 2020-04-16.
  33. "Inquiry calls for web pre-screening to end UK child abuse 'explosion'". the Guardian. 2020-03-12. Retrieved 2020-11-15.
  34. "Yubo s'associe à l'ONG NCMEC pour renforcer la sécurité de ses utilisateurs". TechGuru (in French). 2020-04-21. Retrieved 2020-11-27.
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