Yo can now push notifications from 150 different services to your phone

Yo made a big splash when it arrived last summer. The purple-hued app served a single purpose, but it went viral on iOS and Android and a month later secured $1.5 million in seed round funding. Investors, it seemed, were excited by the prospect of an app that could deliver one-tap notifications to millions.

Today, Yo delivered on expectations that it would expand the app’s functionality to include notification support for different uses outside of the simple greeting. The company this morning announced the launch of the Yo Store, which offers access to more than 150 services that users can “follow” for push notifications via Yo.

The idea is that instead of just receiving ‘Yo’ messages from friends, you’ll receive timely news updates from brands and services you love like USA Today, NBA, Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, and more. Users will have a Yo Dashboard in which they can configure the services from which they want to receive Yo notifications.

The draw for the services’ side is easy to see: the ability to push notifications right to users home screens. For users, this is all opt-in, so no one is receiving push notifications that they didn’t expressly ask for. But the Yo Store is really just the beginning. Yo founder Or Arbel has said in the past that he imagines a time when Yo might be used to alert you that your table is ready at a restaurant or when a friend’s flight has landed. Indeed, when you consider those use cases, updates from BuzzFeed seem rather mundane.

[source]Yo[/source]