Yubo Is for Fun Friendships and Genuine Connections

Yubo is a fun, free app with fantastic features such as live streaming, messaging, and swiping, which makes it easy to find people with similar interests.

There are 1.3 billion Generation Z social media users worldwide, according to a study from BusinessDIT. It’s the go-to choice for those looking to expand their social circle or find new friends online. However, with dozens of platforms to pick from, choosing the best fit for one’s needs can be confusing.

Gen Z craves authenticity, which is why the group, roughly composed of young people from 13 to 25, is flocking to Yubo, a Paris-based live social discovery app. Gen Z makes up approximately 99% of the app’s users because the platform celebrates the spirit of being young. It provides users aged 13 and up a secure environment in which to connect with people who share similar interests from anywhere in the world. The live social discovery app is intended for establishing creative connections and forging authentic friendships.

The app’s team created the format to foster new camaraderie between people from different backgrounds, countries, and cultures. Yubo isn’t designed for dating. The live social discovery app encourages users to be friends, not followers, by providing them a place to make genuine interactions without the pressure of likes and follows.

It’s a favorite place for Gen Z to hang out online gaming, messaging, and livestreaming away from the pressure of typical approval metrics.

A Platform Without Influencers, Followers, or Likes

This isn’t your parents’ social media. There’s no pressure on Gen Z users to be popular. The app was invented by three French college classmates — Sacha Lazimi, Jérémie Aouate, and Arthur Patora. It reached 5 million users within the first year. The app encourages members to be themselves, make friends, and have fun. The live social discovery app is a positive environment where everyone is welcome to be themselves.

Authenticity is central to the platform, which has 80 million users in more than 140 countries using its real-time livestreams to socialize with their friends. Its features are designed for small-group interactions to mimic how people hang out in real life. On the social discovery app, users can swipe between livestream videos and profiles to meet new people worldwide.

The app spotlights the social aspect of being on a social media app and separates users by age. Separating teen and adult users is one way the platform protects the younger users, particularly against content or topics that are inappropriate or irrelevant to their age group.

It doesn’t have a feed for users to post carefully curated moments or any approval metrics, such as likes, to compare popularity through numbers. Users get to be real and feel accepted by millions of other users searching for that same level of friendship.

“I read that people with more than 200 followers are more likely to say they felt pressure about the way they look than those with fewer followers,” stated Lazimi, Yubo’s CEO and co-founder. “This resonated with me, so unlike other social media apps, Yubo is urging our users not to be a follower and instead socialize online in an authentic way and create genuine online interactions without the pressure of ‘how many followers’ they have.”

Yubo Makes It Fun and Easy To Make New Friends

Over 90% of Gen Z use social media to stay in touch with friends. That generation is highly connected and engaged online. Gen Z spends approximately three hours scrolling, posting, and engaging on various platforms daily.

Despite the surge in social networking, it’s not unusual for young women to feel like they don’t have enough friends, according to psychologist Carly Dober. “It is that paradox where we are more connected than ever thanks to technology, but this is not the only thing that helps to alleviate feelings of loneliness,” Dober told the New York Post.

Making friends hasn’t been this easy since sharing your crayons in kindergarten. One of the live social discovery app’s goals is to help combat loneliness among teenagers and young adults. Lazimi explained that the platform is doing its part to accomplish that “by enabling them to meet new people online and make friends.”

It’s been helping new friends connect since its inception in 2015. The app was initially called Yellow, a Snapchat companion app that helped people find new friends on Snapchat. According to the Yubo team, “Since the days of Yellow, our core values still remain the same: We want to connect people virtually and give them a place to socialize in a real way — as real as they would in real life. Since then, we have come a long way and created a truly unique user experience with community at its center.”

Since it connects users in real-time while they’re active on the platform, users can make immediate connections. It’s updated its in-app onboarding interface and tags feature so users can contact friends based on their interests.

When members create an account, they can add tags to their profiles to let other users know what subjects they like to talk about. When users find a profile with a tag that sparks their interest, they can click on it to see which other members share that interest. More than 6 million users have already made use of the tag feature.

Two London-based Gen Z friends, Angelica and Mjay, met during a livestream in January 2021. Mjay said meeting Angelica “opened my eyes to making friendships online, and I felt safe communicating and streaming on Yubo. I’m so much more open to making friendships online now I have had such a good experience.”

Sarah, a 20-something in Australia, agreed. She stated, “It has been incredible to find a digital community where everyone can feel connected and form genuine friendships regardless of where they are in the world.”

Gen Z enjoys the live social discovery app because it allows them to connect and build friendships with people all around the globe. “Yubo is a response to a fundamental need of Generation Z — socializing and creating friendships in the digital world in the exact same way as in real life,” Lazimi explained.