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Zero to a Million Users in 15 Days

kik.com

51–60 of 77 posts

Re: Zero to a Million Users in 15 Days

#51
post #45

How is this different or better than other instant messaging apps for smartphones?

I have the same question. It's not actually clear from the website what they are offering.

Who knows, since I'm curious I could perhaps download the app and make an account and then find out that it's not what I thought it was, but I would be counted as +1 users in this million... Wonder how many people did that.

Re: Zero to a Million Users in 15 Days

#52
post #13

Ok so I just read every article I could find about these guys online - could somebody explain why a user would install kik over standard text messaging or IM? There must be something to it, I just don't know what. If it wasn't for the buzz, it is a product website I would just brush past without a second glance

Because it is essentially Blackberry Messenger for all smartphones. Many people only use Blackberry because of the speed and D/R status of BBM regardless of how they feel about the device.

I'm not familiar with BBM , but it appears Kik works for Iphone, Android and Blackberry. The only significance I can see between using something like IM client, available on all these clients, is letting you know if message was read or not. Is there anything else, significant about BBM ?

Re: Zero to a Million Users in 15 Days

#53

One thing about social apps is that once your friends all are signed up to a new product and settled in there, there is no purpose for you alone to different be in a different app. You wont' have the social part in it. Kik, with it's whatever marketing seems to be got popular with many people and it might become defacto for them for near future. And it will get tough for everyone to move to an alternate app. As many…

I believe on the smart mobile apps area it works a little differently. I've seen apps like Fring, Tango, and Textplus.. all appear on the top of the apps market, and what appears to be significant downloads. I think in general people will download apps just for the sake of trying and use it, but apps that get any long term usage is far and few.

Re: Zero to a Million Users in 15 Days

#55

Hi All, Ted from Kik. Just wanted to jump in and answer a few questions: On October 21, 2010 we launched a completely new service. The only thing that was the same between new Kik and old Kik was the name and the app store accounts. Users from the old system (about 55K active in the last week before the hard switch over) were notified that the new service was available and that the old one would soon be shut down. Ab…

I have a quick suggestion for blog posts like this: don't assume that readers have any idea what it is you do. Take the opportunity in the first paragraph to describe what your product is and why people use it. That way, people coming to your post who aren't already users will be oriented immediately. They will, I suspect, also be more likely to use your product.

Re: Zero to a Million Users in 15 Days

#56
Having just read the book Influence by Cialdini, this strikes me as perfect use of the social proof principle, regardless of if the numbers are real of not. "Hey, this app has a million users, it must be pretty good".

Personally, I couldn't register. Keeps saying I have no network yet other apps work fine.

Re: Zero to a Million Users in 15 Days

#57
I wonder why Ping or WhatsApp wasn't able to get this viral. The only viral feature I saw is when I installed it, it went through my contact list (I'm assuming) and found all my friends that already have it installed. Others were able to find me even though I didn't enter my phone number when signing up. Weird.

Re: Zero to a Million Users in 15 Days

#59
Congrats to the Kik team!

When I first heard of Kik, I thought it to be somewhat repetitive. There are tons of apps just like it. But, the viral nature of the app sold me. The fact that contacts are automatically added allow me to use the app immediately.

The next steps for Kik are crucial. People are going to have a problem with being so accessible to people they don't know. The ability to block users might arise conflict with "Why did you block me on Kik?" I'm interested to see how they handle these issues. On top of that, they're adding image support, which I think is a pretty hefty dent on their servers.

Again, congrats on the growth, but good luck with keeping your users! As of right now, it took me a whole minute to send a Kik message out. I'm sticking to Blackberry Messenger for now, which by the way is an amazing client minus lack of cross-mobile platform availability.

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