Can someone explain to what's so awesome about this app? When that other link hit the front page - I couldn't even tell what the hell the app was for. I guessed from the image that it was some kind of messaging app - but couldn't for the life of me find any information on that site that could tell me why I care.
And yet - a million people seem to have done better than I. Dubious...
Got to love that apparenly iPhone, Android, and Blackberry are "all". Targetting the early adopters makes sense, but making your tagline a blatent lie doesn't.
Well, the "asynchronous" and sent-delivered-read notifications are cool, but what I'm really excited about is this:
"Here’s where things get interesting. If it can build its community, Kik has a lot of new territory to cover if it wants to. It can layer on functionality as it sees fit. For example, it can let you take pictures, and show friends what you’re seeing. It can then let you stream the music you’re listening to, directly from your phone over your friend’s phone. The same can be done for video. And it can be done over any device. While none of this is available right now with the app, Livingston demonstrated this advanced streaming technology to me, so it’s clear he can turn it on at pretty much any time.
During the demo of all this, we sat hundreds of miles away from each other, but he was able to remotely take over the Chrome browser (with my permission, of course) on my MacBook. He then played music over it — all while remotely operating this from his phone. All I did was enter a code that he gave me so that my browser knew to pair with the phone and allow the stream. (A QR code can be used, too.)
It’s pretty cool. Basically, Kik’s technology lets you wirelessly “sling” any content on your phone to any device running on any software. This hasn’t been done before, as far as I know. Sure, AppleTV lets you stream iTunes content to the TV, but it’s a closed garden. You can’t run Apple content on other devices. Kik’s technology allows you to stream pretty much any content on any device with a browser, whether it’s a basic PC, or even a PS3, Wii or a Windows Media Center device.
It’s heady to think of the future of this application. I can scan my surroundings with the camera on my Droid, Blackberry or iPhone with merely a cellular connection, and then stream it to my friend’s phone. Or I can go to my friend’s home and stream an HD move from my phone onto his TV."
Basically, Kik’s technology lets you wirelessly “sling” any content on your phone to any device running on any software.
That should have been on the home page. This "free real-time texting" thing makes no sense to me. Doesn't virtually everyone with a modern smartphone have free real-time texting?
But being able to stream live TV from my Media Center box to my phone would be cool.
Although, it's an strange move on their part not to immediately release at least some of these features. I'd have thought that the initial confusion or lack of clear product differentiation would have turned users away who might not come back when Kik releases more interesting features.
What explains their virality? Maybe the S-D-R thing is good enough for an initial hook?
It's a Blackberry Messenger clone which also works on iPhones, and Android phones. If this where to become the de facto messenger, you should be able to chat with anyone regardless of what phone, or messaging services they prefer (as they would be forced to use the service to be able to talk to everyone of their peers).
And yet - a million people seem to have done better than I. Dubious...