Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) announced yesterday that its Skype Qik app will be shut down on March 24.
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Skype Qik was launched to take on other ephemeral messaging apps such as Snapchat and Facebook’s Slingshot. In 2014, we launched Skype Qik, a mobile video messaging app to help share moments with groups of friends.
Skype Qik was designed as a “spontaneous” video chat app that let users record video messages to a group of friends and send them off, or issue quick video reactions to messages they received. The shutdown won’t be sudden, though, and users will have about a month from now to save any special messages. The company says that the major features of Qik have been rolled into the regular Skype apps; video messaging already existed in Skype when Qik was released, and filters were added in October previous year.
The company said in a blog that after this date, one can not send or receive video messages. In fact the original Skype app was more advanced as it offers extra features such as video calling and files sharing.
Skype competitor Google Hangouts has had a group video call feature that supports up to ten people at once for quite some time now, but Apple still has not added such a feature to FaceTime.
So, if you’re now using this app, you should make sure to save any messages that you might want to keep.
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Even though Microsoft’s endeavor with smartphones is not doing that well, as Windows Phone seems to be less relevant each day, the company is making a great job in dominating the scene for its rival platforms – Android and iOS. “To send a video message in Skype today, simply look for the video message icon in the media bar”.
