Title of the Essay, Author, Date

Yik Yak's Growing Pain by Norra Dunne(December 5, 2014)

Title of the Reflection

Yik Yak's Growth

First Impression

Growing up teen-ager

Quote

If Facebook is the king of social networks and Twitter the queen, then Yik Yak is Twitter’s immature younger sibling – ambitious, but with no hope for a seat at the throne. 

Reflection Paper

Honestly, this is my first time I’ve heard about this app Yik Yak. And learning about this application I do not have any intention to use it. I am not interested simply because of anonymity of the users. In fact, anonymity has already hurt the app’s reputation by making it a venue for cyber bullying. Vicious gossip and cruel lies about specific people surfaced last spring, especially among young teen users, prompting outcries from parents, school administrators, and the media.

It will be nice to know if you knew who are the persons you are connected. Who are these persons posting of their status. And about the news, are they credible? 

What Yik Yak has that other prominent social networks do not is an easy, automatic location feature. (Twitter can filter by location, but it requires opting in and an advanced search.) On Yik Yak, users can quickly find out what’s going on where they are – or anywhere else they want to snoop.

Perhaps it’s not surprising then that the founders of the app want to use this location feature to grow their product. After all, people are already turning to social networks for news. Thirty percent of adults in the United States get news from Facebook, according to Pew Research analysis.

But Yik Yak may need to sacrifice some of its anonymity to fulfill ambitions of becoming a source for reputable news coverage. Users who value truth may demand to know who is providing the information they read because, naturally, people who attach their name to their words are more credible.  Say for example how are we going to believe if the news are credible if we do not know where the news came from.

5 things I learned

 1. Anonymity is not credible.

2. News, will be credible if you knew who is talking.

3. People who value truth may demand to know who is providing the information they read because, naturally, people who attach their name to their words are more credible.

4. Yik Yak has that automatic location feature.

5. Yik Yak is anonymous.

5 integrative questions

1. What could be the reasons why some people wants to hide their identity?

2. Why are you going to believe to a news coming from nowhere?

3.  What was it behind to those people who do not have the usernames, passwords or profiles? 

4. Why does the user feel comfortable writing statements they would not say if their names were attached to the sentiments?

5.  Who/What is Yik Yak?