Everyone wants to make a mint in the App Store. But while some developers slave away in coding dens on original ideas, others see a get-rich-quick shortcut through copying.

The result is an App Store littered with clones, frustrated devs, and Apple stuck playing a never-ending game of whack-a-mole to police the rip-off apps.

Recently the developers of micro-messaging service Yo — this year’s most unlikely App Store success story — were shocked to discover that another eerily-similar app called Yolo was hoovering up its potential downloads.

“I noticed a clone that was an exact replica, including the exact same UI, same App Store screenshots, and same App Store description copied word-for-word,” Yo creator Or Arbel tells Cult of Mac.

Where there’s a popular idea, you can be sure the clones will follow. Earlier this year the popular app in question was Flappy Bird, and here in July it’s simplified message app Yo, which has to date received $1.5m in funding.

A few weeks back we wrote about Yo spoof Hodor, but it seems that there’s another more pressing clone out there, called Yolo, which Yo founder Or Arbel describes as “a complete fake copy of our Yo app.”

In response to Yolo, Arbel has filed a complaint with Apple, asking it to remove Yolo from the App Store since it allegedly infringes on Arbel’s copyright and trademark.

Yo went from being what was considered a dumb joke to an amazing success basically overnight. The app’s idea dead simple: let the user send only the word “Yo” to a friend in a push notification. Now there’s an API for the app and it’s being used to warn citizens about missile strikes in the Middle East.

As you can imagine, there are plenty of app makers trying to jump on the Yo bandwagon after all the attention it has been getting. One app that sticks out from the rest is AHOY, a new iPhone app that takes the Yo concept one step further by adding location to the mix.

When Yo, an app which lets you send out one word messages (hint: they all read “yo!”), hit the App Store and raised $1 million in the process, it seemed that messaging apps had reached their minimalist bottom.

Not so, according to the makers of TAP: a new check-in app looking to snatch Yo’s status as the world’s fastest messaging app. TAP lets you broadcast your location to friends by simply tapping twice on your phone, without even having to unlock it. The location update lasts just ten minutes before disappearing — making this something along the lines of the “Snapchat for Location.”

Since launching last week, Yo has mostly been a joke of an app with $1 million in funding, a horrifically bad security hole and the best Games of Thrones-themed clone to ever hit the App Store.

Somehow it’s already amassed one million users even though all you’ve been able to do in the app until now is toss Yo!s from one screen to another, but thanks to the addition of IFTTT integration, Yo could actually be pretty useful – if everyone hasn’t deleted it yet.

Like Flappy Bird, no one is really sure why Yo became so popular suddenly. The simple app only lets you send the word “Yo” to friends, and yet it received $1 million in funding and peaked at No. 3 on the App Store charts.

Fans of the hit TV show Game of Thrones on HBO should check out a better alternative to Yo called “Yo, Hodor.” Why? Because Hodor.

Yesterday we wrote about Yo, the messaging app which has become inexplicably popular over the past month, and has netted $1.2 million in venture funding.

Less than 24 hours later it seems that Yo has hacked by a Georgia Tech student, together with two of his room mates. The hack allows for them to access any Yo user’s phone number, spoof Yo messages from any user, spam users with multiple messages, and even send push notifications featuring any text they want. Another hack appears to let hackers Rickroll users with the infamous Rick Astley song.

You know those ideas that are so simple you feel like you really could have come up with them yourself? Yo is one of those apps.

Launched on April Fools’ Day, it has recently become inexplicably popular — with 2 million messages sent over just the past month. If you haven’t used it, the idea behind it is simple: like Snapchat, you establish a username inside the app and can then send push notifications to friends reading “Yo” and featuring audio of a voice saying the same thing. Oh, and did I mention that it’s creator has just raised $1.2 million in funding?