Yo, the curiously simple app that lets users send the word "yo" to each other, has expanded with profiles, links and hashtags as it sets out to become the next Twitter.

Based in San Francisco, the messaging app has 2.5 million registered users, 1.2 million of which used it last month, and held a $1 million funding round in June, the Financial Times reported.

While it continues to tout itself as "zero characters communication," Yo launched an update on Tuesday that allows users to make profiles with a name and a photo as well as their user handles.

All the app does is let people send a "yo" message to their friends as selected from a columned list, similar to Facebook's "poke" feature. The new update signifies that Yo hopes to be used as a "notifications center" where people can send things from the Internet to their friends, CNET noted.  

Using Yo, brands and news outlets can send links to Yo followers with www.rssyo.com.

Link feeds that have already cropped up in the Yo sphere include alerts for major earthquakes or weather; Instagram posts from friends; and FedEx deliveries, according to the Financial Times. Similar to Twitter, the app now lets users create hashtags and share them; trending hashtags are featured on the Yo website. 

"If you look at the new version and we didn't tell you about the new features, you would probably never see them in the first place," said Yo founder Or Arbel, as quoted by the Financial Times. "So, for the users that want to keep using it as before, nothing has changed. However, for the users who want to dig deeper, we added limitless possibilities of how they can use the app."

Yo is available for Apple's App Store, the Google Play marketplace, Amazon's Appstore, and the Windows Phone Store.

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