Yik Yak or Jodel?

When it comes to the Internet business and especially to apps and services intended to connect people, history repeats itself: As soon as a new player (usually U.S.-based) shows signs of success, its idea is being adopted by startups elsewhere in the world. Often these imitators fail, but sometimes they manage to capture market share in their “home” regions before the “original” service is being made available there. We have seen this playing out with many of today’s leading social services such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest or Instagram.

Right now it is happening again, at least partly: Yik Yak, an Atlanta-based app for anonymized, location-based public messaging which got very popular among high school students, inspired the Berlin-based company Jodel to launch a very similar app last year, which managed to become a success in Germany.

But here is where history follows a slightly different path this time: Jodel has managed to grow beyond its home market. Google Trends shows Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, Austria and France as the current Jodel hotspots. Yik Yak on the other hand sees most of the searches in Ireland, the U.S. New Zealand, Canada, the U.K. and Australia. Searches are not a perfectly precise measurement for popularity, but good enough. Continue Reading