What is so special about Kik Messenger?

[ThomasR]

It seems like many people like it, but I don't understand why. What makes it different from any other mobile messenger? I mean, they're not the first to make a cross platform IM client.

[lowcup550]

No kidding! I was asking the same thing myself. Gtalk/LiveIM/AOL/Yahoo all have clients for Android, iPhone, Blackberry.

From my take, I believe it all comes down to this: They kept their marketing and message simple and understandable, and made it WIDELY available to anyone using one of the top 3 smartphone choices today...they made it fast..they made it work...and they added a couple of nice little features...status of whether or not the msg has truly been sent, delivered, or read yet (see the "best' source article down below I found...it does a great job explain why this is so special as well, in terms of tech).

Kik focused right from their launch, right on message as being solely a replacement mobile sms/texting replacement.

They launched (all at once, and on each app store) supporting all of the 3 leading mobile platforms all at the same time. Regardless what phone your friends, family have, you call can download and text now. And now, with a nice big splash from all sectors of the mobile twitter/blogsphere,they announced that they already hit 1,000,000 users in 15 days.

It is funny. To the point of your question...there are plenty of other services that do this...but how many people really know this out of the tech circles?

People have to learn and discover this about gtalk or LiveIM, as they don't come right out up front that you can do this....they push their desktop versions first, and then, "oh by the way, go to our downloads area to get your mobile version"...plus direct iphone support from the services come out as 3rd party apps that connected to various IM services....this one come out right away as a new and service all together, and their android and blackberry cousins in tow....

I am sure that many users in the iphone sphere did not now about cross platform IM until they discvered that there is a very popular free app and service that replaces the need to SMS with your friends, regarless of their type of smartphone...

The biggest "Kik"ker to all of this? They managed to do in 1 one month what RIM/Blackberry has been trying to do with their Blackberry Messenger....the only thing is that RIM should should have focused on cross-platform capability first, then get the masses, then convince people truly interested in messaging that the best texting experience is on a blackberry phone....

Oh well, great job for Kik, another lesson learned for RIM.