How did Kik become so popular?

[bthomas]

Most of GetDare's messenger threads are for Kik, and I believe that more users have their Kik information listed than pretty much any other messenger. If I remember correctly, it's been like this at least since I joined around 2 years ago.

Does anyone remember when it became the unofficial standard on GetDare for messengers and have any guesses for why it's more popular than others? I'm just curious.

[Ace_E360]

My guess (this is certainly true for me) is that kik is actually relatively unpopular. How often do you see people use it in the "real" world? As a result, its fairly safe to use for kinky purposes. You don't have to give out you phone number, its not associated with something that your real life friends see (i.e. facebook), but it works and feels like texting, rather than another email account.

[yui]

As of May 2016, Kik Messenger had approximately 300 million registered users, and was used by approximately 40% of United States teenagers.[6]

Kik Messenger has drawn controversy due to its reported involvement in a number of incidents of child exploitation. The app has been criticized as unsafe for minors due to its anonymity features and allegedly weak parental control mechanisms

yeah sounds about right lol

[Runesmith]

I don't think people use kik for anything much other than anonymous kinky chats, hook ups, pretending to be someone they are not, and for spamming. The main draw of kik for that demographic is the relative anonymity. Unlike most other messengers, you don't need to give out your phone number to create an account - just a burner email account would do.

Kik, as an app, is horribly buggy, slow, and annoying. I stopped using it when the Windows 10 app on the Microsoft app store expired. As a die-hard Windows Phone 10 fan who has pledged to keep his Lumia alive until it finally goes to metro heaven, I detest the fact that Kik abandoned the last 3 users (I am being generous here) of the Windows 10 mobile platform.

Skype, is in theory, an anonymous platform that does not require a mobile phone number to sign up. However, you will find that after a few days of setting up and account, Microsoft locks your account, making up an outrageous lie that someone has used your account to send spam mail, and demands your phone number to re-activate it. This is a lie. I even created an account with a randomized string as a user name, and an 80 character randomized ASCII password (which would have needed a Cray XMP a few million years to crack), and Microsoft still lied about it being hacked. This is why I hate Skype. I still have the very old Skype account I created during the Live Messenger days, and that still works with no mobile number attached.

However, the new Skype app for the Windows 10 phone is crap. Once you install it, it takes over the SMS functionality of your phone. So, if you have a kink Skype account, there is a risk that you might message one of your business colleagues using your kink account. This is why I deleted Skype from my phone, and use it only on the laptop, where I can run multiple skype sessions with different logins, if I want to.

Every other messaging platform that I know asks for your phone number, and goes through your address book to find contacts. I find that very intrusive.

[Magnetic]

Originally Posted by bthomas

Most of GetDare's messenger threads are for Kik, and I believe that more users have their Kik information listed than pretty much any other messenger. If I remember correctly, it's been like this at least since I joined around 2 years ago.

Does anyone remember when it became the unofficial standard on GetDare for messengers and have any guesses for why it's more popular than others? I'm just curious.

I will discuss the question you actually asked about the popularity of Shitty KiK, but first I must discuss this most important thing:

WHY DO I CALL "SHITTY" KiK SHITTY KiK?
Personally, I can't stand that thing. I havebeen referring to it lately only by adding the word "Shitty" as a prefix to the name, and I will do so for the remainder of this article.

I will compare it to SkyPe. For the record, I do not like SkyPe either, but it is so much better than any other product that does IM and I know of. I am probably wrong, but that is just from the ones I know of.

I do hope Shitty KiK will clean up their act. There are only 2 things they need to fix and I would be sold on them. There are 3 reasons why those 2 things are important.

The things they need to fix are:

• Portability

Portability Fix
Shitty KiK is not a portable app. What, you said that it can run in virtually any Android, iOS, and even on Windows device?

Well, my friend, that is exactly the problem. While it certainly is portable among device, what about desktops?

I have many times used the SkyPe app on my Linux box, and switched to my Android phone (or vice versa) and my slave girl has not even noticed...

Can I do that with Shitty KiK? No, never!

Chat history
Chat history should be server based, not device based.

Keeping your history on the server may seem obscure and unimportant... but it does has direct implications on the features of the client app.

Lost Access To Phone Fix
Have you ever lost access (for any reason) to a phone?

To me, it has happened many times. Each time, I have lost all my Shitty KiK conversations. True, the contacts where still there, but the conversations where not. So I would forget who the contacts where, and they where effectively lost.

Had Shitty KiK kept the conversations on the server, it would have never happened.

Transparently Hold A Multi Device Chat Fix
The second reason the actual location of the chat history is important is because of my current inability to switch devices, even between two supported devices, on Shitty KiK right now.

To be able to smothly switch devices the way you can with SkyPe now... you need to have some form of history syncronization between multiple devices or computers done live and in real time. This is impossible without a server of some sort storying the chat history.

Yes, I am aware of the fact that MS owns SkyPe and I hold that all of their products are Shitty. Well, it just so happen that (as usual) they bought an excellent product and just haven't had time or dedication to turn into a disgusting shitty thing yet. I am looking for the replacement. There are many things I dislike about its operation, but these two things they got right, since the beginning (and that's why MS purchased them).

3 reasons, only 2 things to fix.

Why Is Shitty KiK So Popular?
Shitty KiK is popular because popularity is not equal to high quality. You want an example? I can name you two of the top of my head?

• Shitty Windows
• Shitty Office

Those two products may be the state of the art, 10 years ago! And that being generous.

Weather a product is popular depends on mainly timing and desitions taken by the company that holds it, not on the quality of the product.

The only thing Billy Boy programmed in his life was a Basic interpreter. Afterwards, he got away with purchasing finished products, relabeling them, killing (economically) its creators and competing products and obtaining a monopoly. Even his original flagship product he got that way... Did you know that MS-DOS 1.0 was really a relabeled product named DR-QDOS? Never heard of the Digital Research - Quick&dirty Operating System BG bought for $50.000?

Was it any good? Hell no! Nor where any of the products that he later sold!

To terminate this post on a light post, a call girl returned to her pimp's place after servicing a guy named Bill... So she said to him:

"Now I know why he named his company Microsoft!"

[fieldman]

Kik is great. No need to provide personal info to sign up or a phone number. Chat logs are easily wiped from the app by simply logging out.

On the other hand, it does scan messages passing through its servers. Also, there is no desktop portability.

I don't use apps that demand a phone number. That's a way of de anonymising you and uniquely tagging everything you do on an app and making you traceable. When was the last time you changed your number?

[Jaro]

Originally Posted by Runesmith

Every other messaging platform that I know asks for your phone number, and goes through your address book to find contacts. I find that very intrusive.

I use Google hangouts together with Miss Butterfly and Miss Icey. It's linked to an email that I only use for kink and it doesn't ask for a phone number. Yes it's Google so Google knows how kinky I am but at least it's pretty much anonymous and easy to use.

I will never install anything or sign up for anything that asks for my phone number. And since they made Windows 8 I don't trust Microsoft products in general anymore either. I'm actually starting to trust them less than Google.

[Dom6BDSM]

Because of ki(n)k.