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Skype Qik was a video messaging service by Skype. It was created by the company, Skype Technologies, 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 includes ...
, 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 lan ...
devices, allowed users to exchange video messages between individuals or within a group. Previously, the Qik service offered a mobile-based live
video-sharing An online video platform (OVP), provided by a video hosting service, enables users to upload, convert, store and play back video content on the Internet, often via a structured, large-scale system that may generate revenue. Users will generally u ...
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 startup, launched its
alpha Alpha (uppercase , lowercase ; grc, ἄλφα, ''álpha'', or ell, άλφα, álfa) is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of one. Alpha is derived from the Phoenician letter aleph , whic ...
version in December 2007 and went into public
beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; grc, βῆτα, bē̂ta or ell, βήτα, víta) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced labiod ...
in July 2008. Qik was compatible with approximately 140+ cell phones. Qik videos can be shared on numerous services including Ovi Share, Facebook 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 Facebo ...
, Twitter, Livestream, 12secondstv, YouTube,
Blogger A blog (a Clipping (morphology), 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 ...
,
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 M ...
, Tumblr, WordPress, Digg,
StumbleUpon StumbleUpon was a discovery and advertisement engine (a form of web search engine) that pushed web content recommendations to its users. Its features allowed users to discover and rate Web pages, photos and videos that are personalized to their ...
,
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. 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, 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 ...
, Moscow,
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-eight ...
. 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 from Marc Benioff (
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, an ...
), 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 Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was onc ...
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 co ...
. 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, Skype 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.


See also

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GroupMe GroupMe is a mobile group messaging app owned by Microsoft. It was launched in May 2010 by the private company GroupMe. In August 2011, GroupMe delivered over 100 million messages each month and by June 2012, that number jumped to 550 million. ...


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