Yubo Hackathon

Highly productive brainstorming sessions rely on creativity and collaboration among talented team members. In November 2023, the live social discovery app Yubo embraced this approach with the company’s inaugural Hackathon.

Held at Yubo’s Paris headquarters, this multi-day event drew participants with diverse backgrounds and skill sets. Yubo’s focus on new product innovation fueled the highly collaborative Hackathon.

During the Yubo Hackathon, multiple teams created new product ideas. Each group selected one concept for development and evaluation. The goal: to enhance Yubo’s competitive position through the introduction of market-friendly product offerings.

Yubo’s Hackathon: The Back Story

Yubo’s first-ever Hackathon reflected the company’s support of its highly creative, technologically astute team members. At Yubo, employees are consistently encouraged to cast aside boundaries and harness technology to achieve impactful goals. Here, Yubo’s leadership designed a challenge to spur the creation of new product innovations.

The Yubo Hackathon Format

First, Yubo employees were tasked with forming cohesive teams, ideally composed of workers with widely diverse skills. From this perspective, each team was asked to identify a problem that impacts Yubo’s business. Defining the issue with metrics and key performance indicators (or KPIs) was the next step. Finally, each team would showcase its viable project, designed to solve the problem, via a live demo.

A panel of recognized internal experts served as the Hackathon jury. Each team would present their selected project to jury members. The top three teams would receive exclusive prizes. In addition, the winning teams would see their respective project’s features sent into production.

Hack Your Way

Yubo’s teams were given only one universal guideline: Hack Your Way. This wide-ranging directive enabled each team to choose the best problem-solving method. This approach encouraged collaboration and creative “out of the box” thinking from everyone.

Solving the problem requires multiple steps. First, each team designed a hypothesis that formed the solution framework. Next, they validated this hypothesis by identifying the Minimum Valuable Product. Finally, the team quantified the optimal solution by listing the desired KPIs and the steps needed to achieve each one.

The Hackathon’s Impressive Results

The Yubo Hackathon projects revolved around three major themes. First, projects were designed to positively impact users’ online friendships. Higher engagement levels, along with user retention, were other common goals.

The Hackathon jury members, along with Yubo’s senior leaders, were united in their praise for team members’ creativity and focus on innovation. They observed four major phenomena:

  • All Yubo Team Members Displayed Remarkable Talent
  • Each Team Used a Highly Creative Problem-Solving Approach
  • Each Team Applied the Latest Technology to Resolve Significant Challenges
  • Teamwork and Collaboration Produced Synergistic Solutions

By all accounts, the inaugural Yubo Hackathon was a resounding success. Besides driving participants’ collaboration and innovation, the winning projects demonstrated Yubo’s desire to accommodate users’ expressed needs.

Looking Toward the Future

Yubo’s leadership remains committed to providing an environment conducive to innovation and continued learning. The company’s first-ever Hackathon demonstrates the company’s dedication to innovative ideas and problem-solving approaches. As might be expected, Yubo plans to unveil additional creative initiatives soon.

Snapshot of the Hackathon Phenomenon

During the past two decades, hackathons have emerged as a dynamic alternative to structure-based collaborations. The term “hackathon” blends the words “hack” and “marathon,” with an initial focus on computer programmers and other information technology (or IT) professionals. Today, however, hackathons encompass almost every discipline integral to a growing business. Economics and human resources hackathons are two common examples.

Regardless of the participants’ focus, their organization typically launches the hackathon to find quality solutions to a predefined problem. Expert-level collaboration is key to accomplishing this goal. A limited time window (often 24 to 72 hours), and a competitive element, drive participants to find innovative problem solutions.

What’s Behind Hackathons’ Popularity?

Not surprisingly, hackathons have become a mainstay of the global business landscape. Two factors are behind the event’s wide-ranging popularity.

First, every hackathon celebrates complete creative freedom. Participants from every background are given free rein to solve problems and craft innovative solutions. Hackathon team members, especially those working in computer-related professions, are completely free from rigid constraints. A universal hackathon time limit is the only guideline.

Second, hackathons are a “win-win” event for both participants and organizers. Participants brainstorm ideas, engage in creative problem-solving, and network with other team members. Hackathon organizers benefit from innovative solutions to recognized problems.

Yubo Continues Its Social Media Leadership Role

The Yubo Hackathon was designed to support the development of additional platform enhancements. Since its 2015 inception, this Paris-based live social discovery app has established a commanding presence on the global social media landscape.

Geared to the Gen Z cohort (aged 13 to 26), Yubo invites users to make sincere connections with others in their age group. Users have plenty of opportunities to chat and play games. These teens and young adults can also choose profile tags of others with similar interests ─ even if they live on the other side of the world.

Finally, numerous daily livestreams (or “Lives”) beckon users to sit in on conversations based around common interests or issues. Streamers often chat, discuss relevant topics, and may even display a signature talent. Taken together, these engagement opportunities encourage users to embrace others’ cultures and customs while often finding common threads.

Yubo’s Popularity Continues to Grow

During the past five years, Yubo has seen impressive global growth. For perspective, from 2020 to 2022 the Yubo app attracted over 60 million teens and young adults. Users represented more than 140 nations, proving the innovative Yubo app’s global appeal.

Not surprisingly, much of this explosive growth occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic’s early months. Gen Zers worldwide were locked down at home and eager to form authentic friendships with other users across the globe. In addition, the pandemic’s first year of isolation led to a 550% increase in users’ daily livestream consumption.

Looking back, in just 4 years Yubo has enabled more than 2 billion global friend connections. These young users have sent over 10 billion messages. During this period, the Yubo platform has also hosted 30 billion livestreams.

Yubo Encourages Safe Online Interactions

Yubo’s first priority is providing its young users with a safe online platform. The app draws a large percentage of minors, so it’s especially important that Yubo proactively eliminates any potential problems for these teen users.

Toward this end, Yubo utilizes multiple technological tools designed to facilitate safe interactions. For starters, Yubo requires all users to verify their ages before being allowed to access the platform. Human safety specialists and livestream moderation also play key roles in this integrated effort.

The Yubo Safety Board’s Guidance

Finally, the respected Yubo Safety Board regularly advises Yubo leaders on online user safety strategies and protocols. The Board is composed of recognized online safety experts from global organizations.

To illustrate, Yubo Safety Board members are based at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Thorn, INTERPOL, and The Diana Award. Together, the Yubo Safety Board develops proactive solutions and provides guidance on emerging issues relevant to Yubo users’ online safety.

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