Why are notifications so valuable?

The notification drawer is prime real estate. I for one always give immediate attention to anything that shows up there (This might have to do with my obsessive habit of keeping the drawer clean.)

You might be reading an article on your browser, get a notification from your email client, reply, and get back to the article. Or you might respond to a text as it comes, and then continue what you were doing. The ‘notification interruption’ is even more exaggerated in apps like Facebook Messenger which have the permission to draw over anything you’re doing in the form of chat heads (drawing over other apps is Android only).

You’ll also read a lot of articles about how Yo is all about ‘zero character communication’, but that’s just one thing it does, just like you can ‘Like’ on Facebook and could ‘nudge’ on Yahoo Messenger (remember remember?). But no doubt, there are some use cases there like a missed call or notifying someone.

Notifications are also going to get a lot more relevant if smart watches become a thing. They aren’t great for doing everything your mobile phone can, but are pretty good for contextual stuff.

Google Now showing info when you need it, Apple Watch sending doodles to your friends, or yo-ing to control your lights from your wrist. Yo’s recent launch for Android Wear shows that the company’s vision is exactly that.

Yo is scaling fast and adding a lot of features while doing so. Hashtags, trending, profiles, location etc. My questions/concerns would be

How well does simplicity scale — Will Yo’s simple UI be a disadvantage while adding newer features? It already feels a bit clunky to me with the numerous new interactions, features and the use of blocky Montserrat text for each and every thing. Will other competing apps successfully use Yo’s simplicity restrictions to their advantage? Ping and Drop may not be exactly Yo, but they’re getting to Yo’s core set of features in a refined way.

Oh well, only time will tell .