The New Improved Kik
Our portfolio company Kik quietly pushed out a new improved version of its popular mobile messaging app yesterday. The only press was a short blog post.
But if you are a frequent user of Kik, as I am, you will immediately notice that its cleaner, faster, and lighter. It practically hums in your hand.
For years, Kik has focused on its bot platform and apps that run in its messenger. That continues. I believe that Kik has more bots on its platform than any other messaging platform.
But over the past few months, Kik has been doubling down on its core messenger to address some lingering issues. Now there is less spam and more speed.
If you haven’t been on Kik in a while, give it a shot. I think you’ll agree that they did a nice job with the new version. You can download it here by clicking on the blue download button.
Comments (Archived):
They definitely reduced spam at least x5, which is great. Now it’s maybe 1 per month which is comparable to what you might get in an email client that never catches 100% of them.
they have worked incredibly hard at that over 2016. kind of relates to yesterday’s post!
This. Just this.”It practically hums in your hand.”
but first i will need a new phone. what kind of phone is best for humming apps?all recommendations thoughtfully received.
surprised you didn’t kik the can further on that one. you could kik it up a notch, no?
I’m on a pun cleanse this week. Wordplay detox. It’s rejuvenating…for all my fellow commenters.
Vim Fresh
You have had a few of your best puns since he won.
Are Kik messages encrypted?
No, as far as I know. I use Signal.
Bitmessage?
I really enjoyed using its API – well documented and straight ahead to use (you make recall another Kik post prompted me to go build a Zork clone in node that uses Kik and its api).
not wanting to offend the gods of avc, and having no financial interest at stake, Patagonia is donating its entire (100%) Black Friday sales revenue to environmental campaigning groups and projects. that’s leadership.
Patagonia’s a company that seems to get a lot of management issues correct.http://qz.com/806516/the-se…
Leadership of what?Patagonia makes great products. I own close to a dozen of their ‘better sweater’ which I wear everyday. I have a few that I haven’t even worn yet. I am worried they will be discontinued so I stocked up. However to me what they are doing is just clever PR and marketing. They do this as well in their catalog which features well to do millennials taking risks wearing their bright colored gear. [1]Patagonia is a clever corporation which presents itself as a social cause and movement by selling premium products.[1] (Which to repeat I buy and I love)….
what they are doing is intelligent. i would like to see more intelligence out there in the market. too many duffers at the moment unfortunately.Leadership – setting a good example, and one others will hopefully follow.
“Just clever PR and Marketing” is no small feat….I would argue it is a huge part of the success and delivery of a company. Apple comes to mind.
Larry’s description is Apple to its core.
I never said it was a small feat. I was just replying to Jason’s use of “leadership” to indicate some kind of higher purpose when what they are doing is quite frankly ‘good business’.
Fair enough thanks for clarifying
You are right on. Patagonia is the real deal.They were created on an ideal and have remained very committed to it for the most part.Having a vision and a core set of beliefs matters.
Spot on. Unfortunately such companies seem to be few and far between.
There are way more than you think especially in the massive new e-commerce movement in the fashion sector. So many great small companies.And my friend the way to win is to celebrate the examples of those that do it right as you did.Thanks for this, I”ll post on it.
Wow what a rad company. No watering down of the message!
I signed up on my phone. I almost did. The part where you select your birthday requires you to scroll through every month starting from November 2016. I am 31, which means there are a lot of months between my birth date and now. Not a good way to verify age.
Out of curiosity, who uses Kik the most? I know they have a lot of users. Are the primarily international, teens, some other group?
Joe Lazarus:resist breathing in the smoke.The youth and underground community who uses Craigslist and Backpage, etc use Kik to establish contact.The very vested interest in companies is a motivating factor in even having this post. Stop it people. Soccer moms, adults, etc use other messaging offerings.This gets so disingenuous.(Straight talk and truth offends. Living in lies will get liars elected POTUS)
yup. teens are the big user base.
See John Pilger interviewing Julian Assange for the great lie that was Hillary Clinton (YouTube).
jason wright:we viewed the YouTube interview of the alleged rapist. And we are in agreement with many of the alleged rapist points regarding HRC. ————–“Trump and Clinton supporters were both looking for a leader to save them and the country. It’s time we matured beyond the desire for saviors and started building a progressive politics in which people unite to save themselves from an oligarchy that is not working.”-Peter Bloom, Truthout:—————-#UnequivocallyUnapologeticallyIndependent (Misnomer using a hash when we don’t have a twitter account)#Termlimits (US Senators 2 terms, US Representatives 4 terms limit)
“Speak into the ear horn sonny”. Teens love it b/c it was the first platform that did not require a mobile service provider: worked on Wifi and all phones, which people with no $$$ sucked up like crazy.
Blunt question.How does Kik make money?
CONTRIBUTORS:Founder and CEO Jon Brod of Confide messaging app messages self-destruct after it is read.https://techcrunch.com/2015…
CONTRIBUTORS:A brief list of the encrypted and messaging apps that provide privacy.Viber. …LINE. …Telegram. …KakaoTalk. …Signal – Private Messenger. …Cyber Dust. …ChatSecure.Confide?
CONTRIBUTORS:Two of the 21 Presidential Medal of Freedom 2016 recipients.Well deserved. America’s royalty comes in many different ways.Good choice POTUS. Will be a hard act to follow regarding character, poise and demeanor. https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Hi creative, who is the guy on the left (I’m not American, and everyone knows the Boss 🙂 )
thebigmix:Vin Scully MLB LA Dodgers Longtime Announcer…https://en.m.wikipedia.org/…
I like to use your famous messaging apps KIK. Through I have no clear idea of it but its work efficiency is so well and I hope its new update is also be good.