Video is the new text, says Skype Qik
New standalone Skype app lets you send short video messages to one or many
If you press the record button in Microsoft’s shiny new Skype Qik app, you have 42 seconds to record a video message. Choose a contact, hit ‘send’. Boom.
Choose many contacts, make them into a group, send them all the same message. Boom.
On the Tube or got no signal? Record and send messages anyway; they’ll go when they can. Boom.
No time to record a reply to someone’s message? Send one of your pre-recorded Quik Fliks. Boom.
Never Qik’d a contact before? They’ll get a text with a link to download the app. Pause… Boom.
That’s outlined the ‘what’ of this app, but what about the ‘why’?
Of its main app and service – and it went to great pains to establish that the two are separate; that ‘Skype’ stays untouched by this newness – people mostly approach video calling with a very premeditated attitude.
Skype calls are normally planned or regularly scheduled and last, on average, for 45 minutes.
Qik, on the other hand, is designed to be an instant cure for your video messaging fix.
It’s also easier, if you’re on the hoof, to record a quick video message than it is to try and trot and type, especially with increasingly larger slabs of smartphone goodness filling up our struggling hands.
Privacy fans will be pleased to hear that each Qik video clip is deleted automatically after two weeks, both on your device and everyone else’s.
You can also, at any point, delete a single clip. They’re stored locally, and not in the cloud, so no need to worry about l337 hackers wrapping their mitts around your latest video of Mr Tibbles yawning.
If you fancy taking it for a spin then you can try out Skype Quik for free on Android, Windows and iOS from today.
READ MORE: 30 of the best free Android apps
StuffTV
