Skype Qik was a video messaging service by

Skype Skype () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, deb ...

. It was created by the company,

Skype Technologies Skype Technologies S.A.R.L (also known as Skype Software S.A.R.L, Skype Communications S.A.R.L, Skype Inc., and Skype Limited) is a Luxembourgish telecommunications company headquartered in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, whose chief business is th ...

, who acquired ''Qik''. The service, offered for Android,

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

, and

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design l ...

devices, allowed users to exchange video messages between individuals or within a group. Previously, the Qik service offered a mobile-based live video-sharing website and two-way video conferencing application that allowed users to stream live video from their cell phones to the internet. Qik enabled users to record and upload video directly from supported cell phones. Qik, a

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Coun ...

startup, launched its alpha version in December 2007 and went into public beta in July 2008. Qik was compatible with approximately 140+ cell phones. Qik videos can be shared on numerous services including Ovi Share,

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

via

Facebook Connect The Facebook Platform is the set of services, tools, and products provided by the social networking service Facebook for third-party developers to create their own applications and services that access data in Facebook. The current Facebook ...

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

Livestream Livestreaming is streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcast in real-time over the internet. It is often referred to simply as streaming. Non-live media such as video-on-demand, vlogs, and YouTube videos are technically streamed, but ...

, 12secondstv,

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

Blogger A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

Seesmic Seesmic was a suite of freeware web, mobile, and desktop applications which allowed users to simultaneously manage user accounts for multiple social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter. Launched in 2008 by French entrepreneur Loïc Le Meur, ...

Tumblr Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a sho ...

WordPress WordPress (WP or WordPress.org) is a free and open-source content management system (CMS) written in hypertext preprocessor language and paired with a MySQL or MariaDB database with supported HTTPS. Features include a plugin architecture ...

Digg Digg, stylized in lowercase as digg, is an American news aggregator with a curated front page, aiming to select stories specifically for the Internet audience such as science, trending political issues, and viral Internet issues. It was launch ...

, StumbleUpon,

Del.icio.us Delicious (stylized del.icio.us) was a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. The site was founded by Joshua Schachter and Peter Gadjokov in 2003 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. By the end of 2008, ...

, MySpace, and

Technorati Technorati was a search engine and a publisher advertising platform that served as an advertising solution for the thousands of websites in its network. Technorati launched its ad network in 2008, and at one time was one of the largest ad network ...

. The videos can also be shared directly on the Qik website or embedded on a webpage for live or pre-recorded videos. The company's headquarters were located in

Redwood City Redwood City is a city on the San Francisco Peninsula in Northern California's Bay Area, approximately south of San Francisco, and northwest of San Jose. Redwood City's history spans its earliest inhabitation by the Ohlone people to being a po ...

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

, with a satellite office that was located in

Zelenograd Zelenograd ( rus, Зеленогра́д, p=zʲɪlʲɪnɐˈgrat, lit. ''green city'') is a city and administrative okrug of Moscow, Russia. The city of Zelenograd and the territory under its jurisdiction form the Zelenogradsky Administrative O ...

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

. It was announced on January 6, 2011, at CES, that Skype had acquired Qik for a sum of $150 million. On February 22, 2016, Microsoft announced their plans to retire the Skype Qik app on March 24 citing low usage. Many features from the app have been integrated into the Skype app.

History

Qik was founded by Ramu Sunkara, Bhaskar Roy and Nikolay Abkairov in 2007. In April 2008, Qik received $3 million in Series B

funding Funding is the act of providing resources to finance a need, program, or project. While this is usually in the form of money, it can also take the form of effort or time from an organization or company. Generally, this word is used when a firm use ...

from

Marc Benioff Marc Russell Benioff (born September 25, 1964) is an American internet entrepreneur and philanthropist. He is the co-founder, chairman and CEO of Salesforce, an enterprise cloud computing company. In September 2018, Benioff acquired ''Time (mag ...

(

Salesforce.com Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management (CRM) software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, a ...

), Arjun Gupta (Telesoft Partners), and George Garrick ( Jingle Networks). In September 2008, a month after its beta release, Qik received an undisclosed amount of investments from Netscape veterans Marc Andreessen and

Ben Horowitz Benjamin Abraham Horowitz (born June 13, 1966) is an American businessman, investor, blogger, and author. He is a technology entrepreneur and co-founder along with Marc Andreessen of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He previously c ...

. Both agreed to serve as board advisers on Qik. In mid-2009, Qik received another round of funding under $5.5 million from Peter Loukianoff at Almaz Capital and Quest Venture Partners, and some private investors. In January 2011,

acquired Qik for $150 million.Skype announces plans to acquire Qik
/ref> On March 19, 2014, Skype and Qik users received emails announcing the original Qik service was being retired. Notification of the impending shut-down was also posted on the company website. The Qik service was subsequently shut down on April 30, 2014. The new Skype Qik service was launched on October 14, 2014. After 9 years of service, on February 23, 2016, Microsoft decided to shut down Qik, therefore users will no longer be able to send or receive any messages via the video chat application. However, the company has also stated that many features of Qik are available via the Skype app.

References

{{Microsoft Social networking services Blog hosting services IOS software Android (operating system) software Windows Phone software 2007 establishments in California Skype 2011 mergers and acquisitions Defunct instant messaging clients

History

See also

References