Image: Helen Sloan/courtesy of HBO
Many popular apps inspire a variety of spinoffs and copycats â€" most of which tend to be lame at best or blatant knockoffs at worst. Yo, the app that allows you to send "Yo" push notifications to friends, is no exception, with a series of wannabe copies already filling the App Store and Google Play.
But one spinoff is doing it rightâ€" possibly even better than the original. Yo, Hodor is like Yo, only more awesome because Game of Thrones.
Hodor is, of course, a reference to the Game of Thrones character, who only says his own name.
The iOS app functions much like Yo. Create an account and add your friends' usernames â€" unlike Yo, there is no way to find your friends who also have also downloaded the app. So you must already know their usernames. Tapping someone's username sends them a "Hodor," which developer Tyler Hederick says was lifted from a clip of the show.
Hederick says he started working on the app soon after Yo skyrocketed to the top of the App Store earlier this month and that he built the app in just four hours, as TechCrunch reports.
Yo was first released in April but didn't get much traction with users at the time. The app recently surged in popularity after the Financial Times published a story on the startup, pointing out the startup had raised $1 million in funding from investors. Twitter took notice soon after and the social media attention helped fuel the app's sudden rise to fame.
It's not yet clear if Yo, Hodor will enjoy the same success as the original, or if the app will even remain in the App Store very long (Hederick himself acknowledges his app uses HBO content without permission.) So go ahead and send your friends a "Hodor" while you can â€" Yoing is so last week anyway.
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