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Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

forbes.com

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Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#31

Post by lemagedurage »

One and a half year ago, I built an (unofficial) bot, Ragebot [0], that would function as spam protection for the many bot accounts joining public Kik groups. The project took off and was added to hundreds of thousands of groups by Kik users.

Two days ago, Ted Livingston announced the closure and Kik has been chaos throughout ever since, with people adopting Discord and Telegram to retain their online friend circles.

One way in which Kik stood out from other popular chat clients was the ability to search for public groups. Even though this feature came with some amount of darkness, people could easily find peers with common interests and make friends.

It's a real shame that this platform has to go. At the moment not much information is available beyond Ted's original blog post, I hope more clarification will follow soon.

[0] https://ragebot.net

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#32

Post by primitivesuave »

bradhe wrote: post #26

If anyone reading this works on Forbes’ web team: Your page hijacking ads and modals begging me to “sign up” are just destroying the reading experience. Please, fix your shit before you ask people for money!

I am a bit concerned by how I didn't even notice reading the article through only four exposed lines on the page while blocking out 80% of the space that had been taken over by ads popping in from all sides. It's become so commonplace that I've developed some kind of subconscious process to deal with it.

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#33

Post by quickthrower2 »

bradhe wrote: post #26

If anyone reading this works on Forbes’ web team: Your page hijacking ads and modals begging me to “sign up” are just destroying the reading experience. Please, fix your shit before you ask people for money!

Oh it's horrendous. Slide up notification appears from the bottom, then 1 second later blue IBM ad covers screen (no X button as far as I can tell). Then another popup appears above the IBM ad with an ad. I close the bottom and popup and the IBM goes by itself, and a video to the left starts autoplaying (thankfully muted!). I scroll down and some animated ads dynamically appear on the right, followed by the big blue IBM ad covering the screen again. To the URL bar I march... https://outline.com/djgeH2

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#34

Post by wang_li »

jonathankoren wrote: post #6

The weird thing about Kik was that everyone I met that used it thought it had some sort automatic message deletion like Telegram, but I don't think it did. Old messages would stay forever.

That’s not the case. After a certain number of messages in a chat, old ones disappear.

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#35

Post by thinkingkong »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #8

> "While we are ready to take on the SEC in court, we underestimated the tactics they would employ. How they would take our quotes out of context to manipulate the public to view us as bad actors. How they would pressure exchanges not to list Kin. And how they would draw out a long and expensive process to drain our resources." Anything you say, can and WILL be used against you in a court of law. Without good lawyers…

Whats makes you think they didnt have lawyers the entire time?

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#36

Post by toomuchtodo »

thinkingkong wrote: post #35
giancarlostoro wrote: post #8

> "While we are ready to take on the SEC in court, we underestimated the tactics they would employ. How they would take our quotes out of context to manipulate the public to view us as bad actors. How they would pressure exchanges not to list Kin. And how they would draw out a long and expensive process to drain our resources." Anything you say, can and WILL be used against you in a court of law. Without good lawyers…

Whats makes you think they didnt have lawyers the entire time?

Good lawyers would likely not have provided advice suggesting this course of action.

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#37

Post by dvt »

I don't really understand how they screwed this one up. I don't really think their closure has much to do with the child abuse stuff (Snapchat had their fair share of controversies), but rather their focusing on their nonsense ICO -- not sure if this was idealism, stupidity, or greed.

Kik filled a fantastic niche shared by both WhatsApp and Snapchat (and to a lesser extent Instagram), how did they drop the ball?

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#38

Post by landonxjames »

lemagedurage wrote: post #31

One and a half year ago, I built an (unofficial) bot, Ragebot [0], that would function as spam protection for the many bot accounts joining public Kik groups. The project took off and was added to hundreds of thousands of groups by Kik users. Two days ago, Ted Livingston announced the closure and Kik has been chaos throughout ever since, with people adopting Discord and Telegram to retain their online friend circles.…

>Even though this feature came with some amount of darkness

I could guess at what you mean, but don't want to be wrong. Could you elaborate on what kind of darkness you were referring to?

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#39

Post by grawprog »

dvt wrote: post #37

I don't really understand how they screwed this one up. I don't really think their closure has much to do with the child abuse stuff (Snapchat had their fair share of controversies), but rather their focusing on their nonsense ICO -- not sure if this was idealism, stupidity, or greed. Kik filled a fantastic niche shared by both WhatsApp and Snapchat (and to a lesser extent Instagram), how did they drop the ball?

>Kik filled a fantastic niche shared by both WhatsApp and Snapchat (and to a lesser extent Instagram), how did they drop the ball?

Kik actually provided something WhatsApp (I'm not sure about Snapchat) didn't: the ability to chat fairly anonymously without needing to provide a phone number. It sure was full of bots though.

Re: Kik, once valued at $1B, is to be closed

#40

Post by echelon »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #36
thinkingkong wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whats makes you think they didnt have lawyers the entire time?

Good lawyers would likely not have provided advice suggesting this course of action.

> this course of action

Which course of action?

Closing? Doing an ICO?

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