No thanks. How can you call your app anonymous and require my identity and contents of my device?
The way these anonymous social media apps work is that they distinguish anonymity from traceability. Since you are traceable (or identifiable via your mobile device), you are NOT anonymous in the eyes of the social media service (in this case Yik Yak). It however, provides you anonymity against the users of the social media. For many Internet users, this is sufficient.
Recently, we did some analysis (sensitivity, type, potential audience and linguistic characterists) on the content posted on anonymous social media like Whisper [0]. One of the things we found is that not all content is equally sensitive in terms of anonymity.
[0] http://socialnetworks.mpi-sws.org/papers/anonymity_shades.pd...
More seriously since I can't be bothered reading another TC fluff piece, did they explain how they are going to make any money out of Yik Yak?
But that $70+ million in outside funding allows Yik Yak’s co-founders to delay thinking about monetization for some time. Local ads are in the back of their minds, said Buffington, but they are not even looking to test that yet. Instead, the company has the freedom to focus on the user experience and growth, which is what they plan to do."
Yik Yak seems very different from hacker news.