Perhaps most significantly, Skype Qik doesn’t tie into your existing Skype network, and it doesn’t allow those not using Skype Qik to view your video messages. However, it has one notable design quirk, and doesn’t allow photo or text messaging, which many other social messaging apps include. I can’t speak for the coworkers I coerced into testing with me this week, but I know I had fun testing Skype Qik. Rather than speaking over one another as you might in a preplanned Skype video chat, each person records his or her own little snippet and adds it to an ongoing thread. Vjeran Pavic for Re/codeĪfter using it for the past week, I think Skype Qik checks off all of the boxes of today’s messaging apps - it’s easy to use and spontaneous, and it brings fluidity to group video messaging. The new Skype Qik is free to use, and it works on iOS, Android and Windows Phone devices. The app is built on some of the technology that Skype acquired when it bought a video streaming service called - you guessed it - Qik, back in 2011. The video messages disappear after two weeks.

Last week, the company introduced Skype Qik, a mobile app that lets users send videos up to 42 seconds long to a friend or a group of friends. It’s a mobile messaging world, and Skype, which claims 300 million users of its VoIP service, has just joined the club.

Multi chat client that includes skype