Kik Messenger

History

Kik Interactive was founded in 2009 by a group of students from the University of Waterloo in Canada who wished to create new technologies for use on mobile smartphones. Kik Messenger is the first app developed by Kik Interactive, and was released on October 19, 2010. Within 15 days of its release, Kik Messenger reached one million user registrations, with Twitter being credited as a catalyst for the new application's popularity.

On November 24, 2010, Research In Motion (RIM) removed Kik Messenger from BlackBerry App World and limited the functionality of the software for its users. RIM also sued Kik Interactive for patent infringement and misuse of trademarks. In October 2013, the companies settled the lawsuit, with the terms undisclosed.

In November 2014, Kik announced a $38.3 million Series C funding round and its first acquisition, buying GIF Messenger "Relay". The funding was from Valiant Capital Partners, Millennium Technology Value Partners, and SV Angel. By this time, Kik had raised a total of $70.5 million.

On August 16, 2015, Kik received a $50 million investment from Chinese Internet giant Tencent, the parent company of the popular Chinese messaging service WeChat. The investment earned the company a billion dollar valuation. Company CEO Ted Livingston stated Kik's aspirations to become "the WeChat of the West" and said that attracting younger users was an important part of the company's strategy.

Features

A main attraction of Kik that differentiates it from other messaging apps is its anonymity. To register for the Kik service, a user must enter a first and last name, e-mail address, and birth date (which, as of February 2016, must show that the user is at least 13 years old), and select a username. The Kik registration process does not request or require the entry of a phone number (although the user has the option to enter one), unlike some other messaging services that require a user to provide a functioning mobile phone number.

The New York Times has reported that according to law enforcement, Kik's anonymity features go beyond those of most widely used apps. As of February 2016, Kik's guide for law enforcement said that the company cannot locate user accounts based on first and last name, e-mail address and/or birth date; the exact username is required to locate a particular account. The guide further said that the company does not have access to content or "historical user data" such as photographs, videos, and the text of conversations, and that photographs and videos are automatically deleted shortly after they are sent. A limited amount of data from a particular account (identified by exact username), including first and last name, birthdate, e-mail address, link to a current profile picture, device-related information, and user location information such as the most recently used IP address, can be preserved for a period of 90 days pending receipt of a valid order from law enforcement. Kik's anonymity has also been cited as a protective safety measure for good faith users, in that "users have screennames; the app doesn’t share phone numbers or email addresses."

Since May 2014, Kik has contained a safety feature that blurs messages from strangers, so that users must opt in to view content sent by people outside their network. Users also have the option to delete any offensive content or block another user from contacting them. These features were developed in response to the widespread use of Kik for "cross-app" communication, whereby a user who encounters people on another app (usually a gaming app) would then use Kik to communicate with them.

Kik introduced several new user features in 2015, including a full-screen in-chat browser that allows users to find and share content from the web; a feature allowing users to send previously recorded videos in Kik Messenger for Android and iOS; and "Kik Codes", which assigns each user a unique code similar to a QR code, making it easier to connect and chat with other users. Kik joined the Virtual Global Taskforce, a global anti-child-abuse organization, in March 2015. Kik began using Microsoft's PhotoDNA in March 2015 to premoderate images added by users. That same month, Kik released native video capture allowing users to record up to 15 seconds in the chat window. In October 2015, Kik partnered with the Ad Council as part of an anti-bullying campaign. The campaign was featured on the app and Kik released stickers in collaboration with the campaign. Kik released a feature to send GIFs as emojis in November 2015. Kik added SafePhoto to its safety features in October 2016 which "detects, reports, and deletes known child exploitation images" sent through the platform. Kik partnered with ConnectSafely in 2016 to produce a "parents handbook" and joined The Technology Coalition, an anti-sexual exploitation group including Facebook, Google, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Bots

Kik added promoted chats in 2014, which used bots to converse with users about promoted brands through keywords activating responses. The feature allows companies to communicate with more potential clients then would be possible manually. Promoted messages reach target audiences by gender, country and device. In April 2016, Kik added a bot store to its app, which allows users to order food or products through an automated chat. Third party companies release bots which will access the company's offerings. The bot shop added a web bubble (also known as "wubbles") feature to allow rich media content to be shared in conversation threads, as well as suggested responses and a feature allowing bots to be active in group threads. An update, released in September 2016, added concierge bots which can give users tips, tutorials, or recommendations within a specific brand.

Security

On November 4, 2014, Kik scored 1 out of 7 points on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's secure messaging scorecard. Kik received a point for encryption during transit but lost points because communications are not encrypted with a key to which the provider does not have access, users cannot verify contacts' identities, past messages are not secure if the encryption keys are stolen, the code is not open to independent review, the security design is not properly documented, and there had not been a recent independent security audit. AIM, BlackBerry Messenger, Ebuddy XMS, Hushmail, Skype, Viber, and Yahoo Messenger also scored 1 out of 7 points.

Awards and recognition

On October 1, 2014, Sony Music and Kik Interactive were given a Smarties award by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) for their global music marketing campaign with One Direction. In October 2016, company CEO Ted Livingston was recognized as Toronto's most brilliant tech innovator by Toronto Life for his work with Kik. Livingston was also recognized for being one of the "Most Creative People in Business" on Fast Company's 2017 list.

Child exploitation

Child exploitation is prominent on Kik Messenger, causing law enforcement and the media to frequently express concerns about the app. Automated spam bots have also been used to distribute explicit images and text over Kik Messenger. A state law enforcement official interviewed by The New York Times in February 2016 identified Kik as "the problem app of the moment".

Prior to 2015, Kik Interactive addressed this issue by informing parents and police about their options to combat child exploitation. In March 2015, the company adopted a more aggressive strategy by utilizing Microsoft's PhotoDNA cloud service to automatically detect, delete, and report the distribution of child exploitation images on its app. (Some experts have noted that because PhotoDNA operates by comparing images against an existing database of exploitative images, it does not effectively prevent "realtime" online child abuse and may not detect material not yet added to its comparison database.) Kik Interactive also began collaborating internationally with law enforcement by joining the Virtual Global Taskforce, a partnership between businesses, child protection agencies, and international police services that combats online child exploitation and abuse. The company also sponsors an annual conference on crimes against children.

Minors' use of Kik

Kik has been criticized for providing inadequate parental control over minors' use of the app. The ability to share messages without alerting parents has been noted as "one of the reasons why teens like Kik". Parents cannot automatically view their child's Kik communications remotely from another device, but instead must have the password to their child's user account and view the communications on the same device used by their child. As of February 2016, Kik's parents' guide stresses that teens between 13 and 18 should have a parent's permission to use Kik, but there is no technical way to enforce the requirement or to guarantee that a minor will not enter a false birthdate. Kik Interactive has said that it uses "typical" industry standards for age verification, that "perfect age verification" is "not plausible", and that the company deletes accounts of users under 13 when it finds them, or when a parent requests the deletion.

Open-source module name

In March 2016, Kik Interactive was involved in a high-profile dispute over use of the name "kik" with independent code developer Azer Koçulu, the author of numerous open-source software modules published on npm, a package manager widely used by JavaScript projects to install dependencies. Koçulu had published an extension to Node.js on npm under the name "kik". Kik Interactive contacted him objecting to his use of the name, for which the company claimed intellectual property rights, and asked him to change the name. When Koçulu refused, Kik Interactive contacted npm management, who agreed to transfer ownership of the module to Kik without Koçulu's consent. Koçulu then unpublished all of his modules from npm, including a popular eleven-line code module called "left-pad" upon which many JavaScript projects depended. Although Koçulu subsequently published left-pad on GitHub, its sudden removal from npm caused many projects (including Kik itself) to stop working, due to their dependency on the Node and Babel packages. In view of widespread software disruption, npm restored left-pad and made Cameron Westland of Autodesk its maintainer. The incident sparked controversies over the assertion of intellectual property rights and the use of dependencies in software development.