Yubo is a French social networking app designed to "make new friends" and creating a sense of community. 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 more than 25 million users worldwide.
History
Yubo was created by Sacha Lazimi, Jérémie Aouate and Arthur Patora, three former engineering students at École Centrale de Paris and Télécom ParisTech. Formerly known as Yellow, it was launched in 2015. 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." In December 2019, the app raised $12.3 million in a funding round led by French private equity firms like Iris Capital, Idinvest Partners, Alven, Sweet Capital and Village Global. The funds will be used to develop its technology and expand its global user base. Between the end of 2018 until December 2019, app users have created an estimated 2 billion friendships, along with exchanging more than 10 billion messages and launching 30 million livestreams. At the end of 2019, Yubo reported a gross revenue of €8.9 million.
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. The app also offers a swiping feature to swipe on friends of similar age and messaging features.
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.
Verified Profiles
In February 2019, Yubo started allowing users to verify their identity with the Yoti app. Users can create an account on the Yoti app and then log in on Yubo to prove their identity. Verified users are marked with a yellow badge on their profile.
Reception and criticism
Following concerns about the app’s safety and reports of incidents between minors and adult men using the app, 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." 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.
