Forget Yo. A new messaging app lets you cut to the chase, or chaser, as the case may be.
Beer?!, a new app for Android and iPhone, bills itself as "a straightforward messaging app to invite friends for a beer." All you do is tap a name in the app's contact list and it automatically sends that person a message saying, you guessed it, "Beer?!"
The app was very much inspired by Yo, the messaging and notifications app that attracted a tremendous amount of press attention over the summer when news broke that it had raised $1 million in funding to let users say "Yo" to each other.
Raphael Franzini and Guga Ketzer, both of whom work in the ad industry in Brazil, started using Yo back in June. Eventually, the beer bottle-shaped lightbulb in their heads flickered. "What we really want to say is 'beer' instead of 'yo,'" Franzini told Mashable.
The lush duo launched their app late last month without any fanfare. They just told some friends, but more users have gradually trickled in anyway. Beer?! now has more than 10,000 users who send an average of 20 "Beer?!" messages a day.
"Sometimes it's not about meeting up for beer," Franzini says. "Sometimes you want to say you’d rather be drinking a beer than doing what you’re doing."
The app does offer at least one novel feature that might inspire others: the language is localized for each user. So if you tap to send Franzini and Ketzer a "Beer?!" in English, they will see the Portuguese translation "Breja?!" instead.
"We think we can create a global community of just saying 'beer,'" Ketzer says, noting that they plan to launch a pr campaign soon. Crazier things have happened.
In the months since Yo first gained mainstream attention, there have been several copycat apps that let users quickly message the word "AHOY" and "HODOR" and "TAP." Beer?! may not be the first Yo copycat, but it may just prove to be the most useful of the bunch.