“Kik, the Canadian-grown hyper-fast instant messaging service added several important features today, along with $8 million funding via RRE Ventures, Spark Capital, and Union Square Ventures.
Kik updated their Android and iOS apps to include 10-person group messaging and picture sharing, essential features for the widely-expanding group messaging app category. The company’s founder, Ted Livingstone, claims their group messaging implementation is better than the rest: “With Kik, we wanted to create a product that allows you to have a real time conversation with one or more people. We wanted to allow conversations to expand and contract naturally, just like they do in real life. And we did just that. In Kik you don’t create a group, you just add someone to the conversation…instantaneously”.
The company, which rose to fame last year by adding 1 million members in 15 days, is embroiled in a legal dispute with RIM, maker of BlackBerry, which pulled the app from their App World in November and subsequently sued them for patent infringement. This disruption, however, has not stopped the company from rising to nearly 3.5 million users, and is committed to rolling out continued improvements to their Android and iOS apps while the dispute continues.
Check out Kik in the Android Marketplace or iOS app store, and at their website at kik.com/m
Via: TechCrunch
