Kik has also raised $120.5M in investments. But the app has become much more than just a chatting app.

Nowadays, Kik is the easiest way to connect with friends from any part of the world. After a few years, Kik became available for Android and iOS users as well. The very first version of the Kik app was developed for the Blackberry operating system. It was founded by students of the University of Waterloo in 2009. With Kik, you just need an email address to sign up and start sending messages. One thing that makes Kik stand out is it doesn’t require disclosing your phone number. In other words, it’s a robust messaging app for keeping in touch with your family and friends. Kik is based in Waterloo, Ontario, and has raised around $27.5 million so far from RRE Ventures, Spark Capital, Union Square Ventures, and others.Kik bridges the gap between the world and your chat. Livingston believes it’ll be easier to encourage developers to optimize their sites for mobile, rather than asking them to build custom Kik Cards - especially since the mobile tweaks will make their sites look better on every mobile browser. In particular, Kik will prioritize mobile sites that exist entirely on one page, have a small Kik script in their code, and whose developers have sent Kik some keywords about their site. The company is also prioritizing websites that have been optimized for mobile devices, like Soundcloud and most major blogs.

All Kik had to do next was add a URL/search bar to the top of the menu. Kik also added a menu that was easily accessible by a swipe from the left side of the screen, which made it easy for people to jump between the apps and their text chats. Those Cards, which have been installed more than 145 million times by Kik users, were the company’s first step towards keeping people inside its apps. The first step towards a solution came in 2012, when Kik launched its HTML5-powered Cards, tiny web apps that let you access sites like YouTube and Reddit. Kik has been working towards adding a built-in browser since it launched over three years ago, Livingston told me, but the company first had to solve the design dilemma of adding the bones of a browser into a mobile messenger.

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