Microsoft releases quick fire messaging app: Skype Qik.

Microsoft launches Skype Qik

Microsoft has launched its own quick fire messaging app: Skype Qik.

The Bing operator acquired Skype in a $8.5 billion acquisition in 2011.

Developed to target what Microsoft has dubbed the ‘Selfie generation’, Qik allows users to film short clips and send them to friends and family.

Stephen Shankland, technology reporter on CNET, has suggested that Skype wants a better showing in the mobile market and that to reach this audience it is natural to target them with apps.

What is Qik?

Pierro Sierra, Skype’s director of Mobile said: “We’re responding to current trends in the market…Skype Qik is a lightweight, spontaneous, mobile-first video messaging app”.

The video messaging app allows users to film short clips of up to 42 seconds long, then send them to individuals or upload them to group threads. Qik also allows users to pre-record up to 12 ‘Qik Fliks’ which Skype describes as “a more personal smiley” its users can send quickly.

The senior reporter on technology website The Verge, Tom Warren, has said that while the instant messaging market is saturated with many rivals – such as FaceTime, iMessage, Snapchat, and WhatsApp – Microsoft is hoping that the simplicity of Qik will differentiate it from the competition.

Unlike Qik’s rival Snapchat the videos are not instantly deleted. The clips aren’t stored on the user’s phone but on Qik itself and will disappear after two weeks.

To use Qik, users download the application, sign up using their phone number and import contacts from their phone, after which the users can send videos to whomever of their friends they choose.

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