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Kik

avc.com

90 pointsbjonathan13 comments

Is investing in Kik really that good of an idea after RIM basically kicked them where it counts? If the rumors about a cross-platform BBM from RIM are in the works and coming soon, I think Kik would pretty much be irrelevant. The only reason I tried Kik for the brief time I did was that most of my friends at the time still had BlackBerrys, but they are switching to Android as time goes by.

RIM App World is hardly "where it counts" when it comes to mobile app distribution. It's a distant third after the iPhone and Android markets. Blackberry has a significant lead with the BBM but the market is growing fast enough that they might get left behind if they don't move fast which history has shown they won't.

After the lawsuit I think investing in RIM or their platform isn't a good idea.

That RIM was more willing to "kick" this company to the curb and serve them a lawsuit, rather than perhaps acquiring an innovative team and hot messaging platform, is indication that this company simply doesn't "get it". RIM is absolutely dead meat if getting sued is your reward for building apps for Playbook or Blackberry.

Why do you think BBM will be any more successful than Kik? I think brand recognition here is actually a disadvantage.

I use whatsapp which, I'll readily admit, is not without its flaws, but it's available across multiple platforms and has a fairly large user base. It also runs on blackberry in addition to iOS and android and, fwiw, symbian. I also like the fact that it registers you and your favorites by phone number - people have many email addresses but typically only one mobile number. I've found so many people I likely would never have connected with otherwise, show up in my favorites.

I've never tried Kik, but I know several people who signed up when it first came out, but then stopped using it after a while because they realized there weren't that many other people using it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk_%28software%29

awful name, at least for the german market. kik is a very cheap textil-discount-chain in germany thats notorious for low-income areas and as a business has many critics because of their employee treatment (esp wages, paid overtime and mobbing) and the producers of their cheap clothes (bad working conditions etc).

I think 3-letter pronouncable domain name trumps German market secondary meanings.

Is that necessarily true? Germany is not exactly a small country (and Kik has a _really_ bad reputation), and few people type in domains directly anymore. What matters more than a good domain name is a name that is easy to remember and google. So I don't know. It might be either way.

I don't think it'd be much of a problem, kik the shop may have a bad reputation but I don't think people will easily confuse the two companies.

3-letter pronouncable dot com. That's worth a lot.

When I read "Kik (avc.com)", I did briefly think of the retailer, and the associated negative emotions. Maybe that's just me, of course.

It's better than one of the competitors called "whatsapp". I tried Kik out last week after hearing about it on HN and really liked it over the alternatives. Sadly the court of popular opinion in my country seems to side with Whatsapp messenger.

Whenever I think of "kik" I think of the three letters next to it on a qwerty keyboard "lol". Perhaps they wanted to make the name LOL messenger but switched to kik for whatever reason.

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