Mobile Chat App Kik Appeals to Brands

Kik, the Ontario, Canada-based messaging app uses usernames, not phone number, as the basis for the accounts. Recently, the platform has begun to increase the range of interactions available through the app, in an effort to appeal to brands.

Last year, Kik implemented promoted chats to allow users to opt-in and connect with brands in a more engaging way. Several brands including NBC News and MTV, have created accounts and post popular stories, quizzes and relevant for consumers who opted in. For NBC, Kik users will send a message with a relevant keyword like "politics," to receive news updates from the publisher (see example below).

Furthermore, Kik users can use promoted chats to identify brands that are currently running promotions, and strike up a conversation with the brand. Allowing for one-on-one marketing, Kik now allows brands to participate in chat-style dialogue with the consumer. Through these new updates, Kik's value is in the earned media produced when users share content - an engagement study shows that Kik messenger sees as much user engagement as Facebook.

Kik continues to create opportunities for brands to connect with consumers. Most recently, the company has ventured into the realm of QR Codes in the hopes of bringing WeChat's success in China, to the U.S. QR Codes hope to provide context for a relationship between the brand and consumer - providing relevant promotions, information 

Kik isn’t just focused on connecting brands — though that’s where most of the revenue potential lies. The company introduced music-themed communities last month, and Kik Codes will help users connect with other users in the same way that Snapchat, WeChat and other chat apps use QR codes to add friends.

Beyond just connecting, QR codes also provide context for a relationship — for example what kind of a code did that person scan, and what location did they scan it from. Using that context, a Kik bot operated by a brand can send the right response to a user. That could mean providing a pizza discount, directions to a store, exclusive tickets, or more. More importantly, it opens a dialogue for future opportunities, too.


Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/08/chat-app-kik-introduces-qr-codes-to-connect-users-and-brands/
http://www.clickz.com/clickz/column/2403229/3-reasons-why-brands-are-flocking-to-chat-app-kik

Yik Yak Raises another $62 Million For Anonymous Messaging App

As discussed in class this week, Yik Yak has recently raised $62 million in their latest round of financing. This is the third round of venture capital fundraising in the past seven months, bringing their total funding to nearly $73 million. This is extremely promising for a start-up that was only introduced a year ago, especially as funders include Jim Goetz, who also recently invested in WhatsApp when they themselves were relatively unknown in 2011. Since then, we all know that WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook earlier this year for over $21 billion.

Yik Yak is an anonymous messaging app that allows individuals to create and view posts from those that are within a 1.5 mile radius, and has been gaining popularity at high schools and college campuses across the country. This proximity-based requirement is what differentiates the apps from similar platforms such as PostSecret and Whisper that offer the sharing of messages to anyone using the app, regardless of location. Though there was quite a bit of backlash a few months ago regarding the opportunities these anonymous platforms open up to cyberbullying (including a piece written for The Huffington Post on “Why Your College Campus Should Ban Bullying”, Yik Yak claims to use geofencing to eliminate this, essentially “fencing off” certain areas such as middle and high schools, and disabling the app in those specified locations. 

For those of you, like myself, who are completely new to the Yik Yak world, here's some terms you should know:

• Yak: A single message that is posted (essentially an anonymous Tweet).
• Yakarma: A numerical score that measures the "success" of a user. The score fluctuates based on the number of up/down votes, replies and comments (kind of like your Klout Score, for people who remember when that was the next big thing).
• Upvote/Downvote: User rankings. Yaks can receive unlimited upvotes, but only 5 downvotes before it is permanently deleted from Yik Yak.
• Peek: This feature gives you the ability to anonymously view other Yik Yak community feeds. Essentially, you can peek into what's going on at Columbia University even if you're not within the 1.5 mile radius, but you don't have the ability to vote or post there yourself. You can peek into any college or city across the world. 
• New/Hot Tabs: While the app defaults to showing the newest Yak on top, you can toggle this setting to show the "hottest" Yak (aka the one with the most number of upvotes in the past hour).

Learn a little more about the Yik Yak platform and their most recent round of funding. 

What do you think? Are anonymous messaging sites here to stay, or are they just the newest fad that's sure to pass?

Celeb turn to chat apps as cozier alternative to Twitter, Facebook

I believe many of you would have followed your favorite stars, celebrities, or singers on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram..Don't you want to be more personal..

It seems to be more and more expensive to advertise on Facebook and Twitter as million users are using them; neverthless, how much of huge volume of information being posted get noticed!

Chat apps such as Line, Kik, Snapchat, WeChat and Viber place marketing messages front and center to people enthusiastic enough to follow stars and brands on them. These apps, which are most-used on smartphones, threaten to take away advertising dollars from the social media leaders.

Teenagers and young adults find them more alluring than traditional social networks or basic SMS texting because chat apps are loaded with attractive features like animated smiley faces, colorful digital stickers, drawing tools, quick photo-sharing, video, and the like.

Its popularity is leading a wave of investment and experimentation, music stars and youth-oriented companies are turning to chat apps an alternative way to better-targeted publicity, and showing that they're hip. Meaning that instead of reaching multiple millions on Facebook, chat apps is the right option that enable marketers to to reach the right people. On average, U.S. adults spend about eight hours a month using the most popular chat apps, Kik, and teenagers probably spend more.

Line, for example, has sticker sales as key source of revenue. The company also allows people to design and sell stickers, which people across 124 countries submitted 30,000 sticker sets and earned $12 million in sales in the program's first three-plus months. But Line doesn't intend to survive on sticker sales alone, instead aiming to be messaging and entertainment platform in the U.S. and achieving it by creating partnerships with major brands.

Source: Latimes by Paresh Dave