Kik for Android and iPhone have been updated to support a new feature called Cards. The popular instant messaging platform hasn’t received a new feature in over a year, but that hasn’t stopped the small Waterloo startup from continuing to grow at a massive pace, recently crossing the 30 million user mark.
The company is adding 100,000 new users every day, which is an enormous achievement considering how quickly they grew after their public release. If you recall, the company crossed the one million registered user mark 15 days after their public launch, and reached three million back in January, 2011.
Today’s update comes with Cards support, which is an embedded version of its open Kik SDK that they launched last year. Users can sketch small drawings and send them to users, which brings functionality that used to be a separate app (known as Sketchee) into Kik itself. Users can also share YouTube videos and images from Google with their contact list.
Cards was built on an HTML5 framework, which has proven to be increasingly powerful and versatile over time. The company isn’t claiming that these are game-changing features, but could be the beginning of a new form of instant messaging app, one that focuses not just on messages but on frictionless sharing. They are accessed via a left-side sliding menu, which mimics the navigation bar found in many modern apps, from Path to Facebook. According to Kik’s CEO Ted Livingstone, these three cards are just the beginning and will expand to do more in the coming months.
MobileSyrup may earn a commission from purchases made via our links, which helps fund the journalism we provide free on our website. These links do not influence our editorial content. Support us here.
