App Firm Yik Yak Cuts 60 Percent Of Staff: Report

BUCKHEAD, GA -- Yik Yak has cut back.

The start-up firm behind the once-anonymous and popular social app has reduced its workforce by more than 60 percent, according to local reports.

The Buckhead company, which employed about 50 people, announced the layoffs to its staff Thursday morning and indicated that the moves were needed so that the firm can stay in line with its priorities.

In a statement sent to the media, company CEO Tyler Droll labeled the cuts as "strategic changes" that were fundamental to the business.

"We recently made some strategic changes at Yik Yak in line with our key areas of focus for the company. Unfortunately, as part of that we had to make the difficult decision to lay off a portion of the team," Droll said, according to tech website The Verge.

Once a Silicon Valley darling and immensely popular on college campuses, Yik Yak has undergone significant drops in its user base and downloads over the past year, due to both bad press and what many describe as fundamental changes to its platform.

At its peak in 2014, Yik Yak was valued at up to $400 million. In addition to maintaining a satellite office in San Francisco, the company moved into sleek new office space at Piedmont Center in Buckhead last year. But then, several executive departures reportedly rattled the company's foundation.

Yik Yak was started in 2013 by Furman University students Stephen "Brooks" Buffington and Tyler Droll, who both went to high school in metro Atlanta, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

The app's anonymity became a major selling point for millennial users who wanted to post about things without being identified. Last fall, the company added phone number verification to move away from anonymity after being beset by critics who said the app enabled bullies and anonymous threats.

Patch reached out to Yik Yak for comment but had not heard back by the time of this story's publication.

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