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Meet The Founder Betting On Voice And Video Comments To Make The Internet A More Empathetic Place

This article is more than 3 years old.

Jennifer Dyer’s fascination with the power of voice took her down several paths, including that of a radio personality as well as a broadcast journalist with VH1 and MTV. Most recently, her passion has led her to entrepreneurship. The Brit along with cofounder Kiaran Sim, whom she met hosting a show on a UK television network launched Yappa, a video and audio commenting tool in July. 

A central, albeit lofty goal of the company, is to make the comments section a little kinder. Unlike comments typed without nuance, taking text to spoken word and video seems to make “yappers” choose their words more thoughtfully when commenting online. 

“The empathy is lost as we’ve gone throughout the years and we’ve ended up with this plethora of platforms where you don’t really know or connect to anybody. You connect to a piece of copy,” Dyer told Forbes.“The failing health of our usual social media activities was disconnecting us, socially, emotionally, empathetically. Instagram and all of our wonderful big tech platforms were just losing that one to one connection.” 

The technology and platform for Yappa have had a few iterations since Dyer cofounded the company in 2015. Initially an app for 30-second inspirational videos featuring celebrities like Beyonce, Demi Lavato and various athletes, Yappa has morphed into a browser extension used by brands like Worldstar Hip Hop, The Hill, IGN and iHeartRadio. Once installed, users can post “yaps” to any site using the extension. 

“We were having to ask users to add another app to their thousands of apps and when Snapchat came out with all those gorgeous animations. That's when we pivoted into Yappa, becoming a widget for one of the biggest marketplaces, the internet,” Dyer said. 

So far, 178 million sites are using Yappa. Although the capabilities of leaving voice and video comments are consistent, brands have taken to using Yappa in different ways. Content hosts use Yappa to set the tone of the comments and conversation, and it seems few users run afoul of community guidelines. Dyer reports that about 1% of posts are flagged for violating rules set by web publishers. 

“What we designed was to help these platforms build their own micro-communities that they’re in charge of, putting the autonomy and power back in the publisher’s hands,” Dyer said.  

For instance, comments for viral video aggregator Worldstar Hip Hop are very different from the parameters politics news site The Hill has set to facilitate conversation in the lead-up to the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Even within one brand, different uses have emerged.

“When our events went virtual, we had to figure out a way to engage with our listeners,” Greg Ashlock iHeartMedia market president told Forbes. The mass media company and largest radio station owner in the U.S. uses Yappa to interact and engage with users. ”You can pull content from the ‘yaps’ to create a morning show, so there’s this cross-pollination of conversation instead of having to go through a traditional model of taking calls and going through a screener,” he explains. “REAL 92.3, our hip hop station in Los Angeles used it recently as an outlet for discussing civil unrest in the country. It gave a voice to the community.” 

Another affiliate station, KFI used Yaps to communicate vital information about coronavirus early in the pandemic. Ashlock notes that Yappa audio and video function is valuable for people who are “socially starved” as they continue to quarantine and remain socially distant. 

Yappa made its debut on iHeartMedia in April, with broadcasts that reach 270 million people a month, including On Air With Ryan Seacrest. Yappa supported virtual events like commencement addresses and iHeartMedia’s virtual prom for the class of 2020. On July 27, NBA star Shaquille O’Neal and Super Bowl Champion Rob Gronkowski hosted a party on the platform, raising $200,000 for the NAACP and Boys and Girls Clubs of America to aid in the fight against social injustice.

Yappa’s success was a long time coming. Dyer and Sim are not among the rare 1% of Black founders who get VC backing. Against those odds, and only after the private equity world ghosted the pair, they turned to high net worth individuals from their networks to bankroll their startup $3.6 million to date. 

A more robust version of the platform will launch on September 15 to include ads as Yappa begins to further monetize its offering and expand into other verticals. It will remain free for users, and also include a more diligent AI-enabled video and image data analytics controls and moderation for publishers. 

“There are so many platforms right now, TikTok and all the other gorgeous ones, having fun, playing games, and being nasty when they want to, just doing whatever they want to do, it’s like a wild, wild west, and there’s been enough of that,” Dyer said. “We don’t want to gimmick Yappa into that, it is a conversational tool.”

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