Turns out Kik is alive and, ahem, kicking, with 30 million registered users — growing at a rate 100,000 new users a day in the last several months — and now it’s out with a new update. To understand the update, it’s important to look at how Kik has amassed its big following, said founder Ted Livingston. He said the app has caught on with younger users, who like the simplicity of the app, with its basic two buttons for chatting and settings. Kik didn’t share how many monthly active users it has.

So when it came time to add more features, Livingston decided to go with a very simple approach. Now when viewing the app, users can swipe to the side to reveal a set of “cards” that work as mini-apps, adding additional features to Kik. 

The first three, which are built in HTML5 and can be installed on a new deck, offer YouTube viewing, sketching and image search. More cards will be added later. Users can receive a message originating through one of the cards, but they’ll need to install the appropriate card to interact with the message.

Livingston said the benefit to this approach is that the main interface remains the same for users. But the app can be customized to go deeper with features for those that want them.

“What we’ve been struggling with the last year and a half is how to take something simple, which is why people love it, and make it feature rich without ruining the simplicity we love,” he said. “We feel this is how you do it.”

In the future, the cards could be how Kik finally starts to make money. Livingston didn’t commit to this idea but he said a company could pay to have their own card listed on Kik. I like the approach Livingston took with the update. A lot of apps start to suffer from feature-creep over time, crowding the basic home page with more and more options. By making additional features optional that can be added like apps, it keeps Kik clean and make it more personal.

Kik has continued to fight on while rivals like GroupMe sold out to Skype, Beluga went to Facebook  AND others like Fast Society moved away from messaging. Livingston said Kik, which also got into a stand-off with Waterloo neighbor RIM, has grown by becoming a back-channel communication tool for Instagram and MeetMe users. He said 50 percent of users on MeetMe, formerly MyYearbook, have a Kik account.

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Spotbros, which launched internationally last month on Android and iOS, served more than 130,000 downloads in its first week and now has more than 300,000 users, primarily in Spanish speaking countries.

The app builds on a foundation of basic messaging and then layers on a host of features. There’s an option to send location-based messages called “shout” to the first 50 users inside of a mile. A shout can passed along to other users through a “re-shout”. Users can also set up their own permanent chat group called a “spot” that is tied to a place, so a neighborhood or activity group can set up an easy way to communicate. Users can join a spot or create their own.

The messages themselves have an extra layer of complexity. SBMails are actually separated into two parts — a basic message with 200 characters, which is connected to a microweb page that can hold a title, videos, images, text and maps. People who receive the message can comment, contribute to a larger thread or share the page through its own URL. 

Spotbros is designed to be secure, so it encodes messages with AES 256-bit encryption. Users must approve who is able to send them direct messages and they can filter out shouts they don’t want to receive. All of the messages get erased from Spotbros servers within 30 days unless someone chooses to save a thread.

The app faces a tall challenge in taking on WhatsApp and becoming a major player in the messaging wars. And it needs to find a way to make location-based sharing compelling for users. The space hasn’t been kind to many startups, including Yobongo and Color. And many location-based people discovery services have also struggled to gain a big following.

But co-founder Alejandro Lopez Monge believes there’s an opportunity to create a safer, more flexible messaging service that builds off the ease of instant messaging.

“We believe that instant messaging can be the glue that will keep together users, online content and location based services. We see IM as a means, not an end,” said Lopez Monge.

Lopez Monge, a foreign exchange trader at HSBC, launched the company with Fernando Calvo, a former Accenture strategy consultant, earlier this year and the two raised $500,000 from Spanish investors and Kallasvuo, who Lopez Monge met at HSBC. While the app doesn’t have any monetization features yet, Lopez Monge said they are looking at location-based offers from local merchants.

While Spotbros is finding adoption in places like Spain and Latin America, I’ll be curious to see how it can compete in the U.S. We’re still waiting to see if people want to really communicate with strangers nearby. But as we’re noticing with the growth of NextDoor, a social network for neighborhoods, there’s more interest in being connected to a group of people nearby. I can imagine that would be where Spotbros finds success, if it can be a mobile way for neighbors and like-minded people to communicate.

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At launch, Experiences will offer a handful of curated events in New York City that are designed for a set number of people, usually about 4 to 6 participants. Users can invite friends to join the event through a unique URL using GroupMe, Facebook or email. When a person reserves a spot, they enter in their credit card information for their share of the event cost but the card is only charged when all the spots are reserved. After an event is booked, a new GroupMe group is created so participants can coordinate before the event and stay in touch afterward.

The service will be limited to a beta group at launch and will eventually spread to more cities over the rest of the year. For now, GroupMe is working with venue owners to craft the events, which can include special perks and unique experiences beyond just admittance. For example, a VIP event for the Upright Citizens Brigade performance includes the ability to skip the line and a cocktail party. Experiences will be accessible only through GroupMe’s online site but mobile app support is in the works.

The plan is to empower users to create their own events and use Experiences to organize them and manage payments, said founder Steve Martocci. Ultimately, it’s about expanding the power of GroupMe beyond an online experience to an offline one as well.

“We want to be able to make groups an everyday part of life,” Martocci said. “Groups are a hard problem and that’s why we’re focusing on how to get people together and make that process easier.”

The move puts GroupMe into competition with other start-ups like CrowdTilt, a crowd-funding service for events and parties. Hecht said GroupMe excels because it has been focused on groups from the start and so it can offer not just event planning or payment but communications services to tie it all together. GroupMe’s ability to tackle event planning was one reason Skype bought the company in the first place. Skype’s CEO Tony Bates said as much at the time of the GroupMe acquisition, describing GroupMe as a service “that helps users stay in touch and make decisions.” Martocci and Hecht told me after the sale that GroupMe had an opportunity to get into the local offers market, using its GroupMe messaging tools to help people plan for offline events.

Here’s what Hecht had to say in a blog post at the time:

The peer to peer economy is driving unprecedented intelligence to the edge of the network, and messaging is just the first wedge in helping individuals and groups make decisions and take actions instantaneously. When I talked about Groupon closing the redemption loop a few months ago, I was adamant that a mobile commerce layer and a social / communication layer are being built out that will have unprecedented impacts on how we interact and consume things with friends in our physical environments.

So expect to see more of this kind of offline planning and local offers from GroupMe. Messaging was just the start but the bigger play is influencing local spending and getting a piece of the local ad market.

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Cross-platform: check.

Touch, has one thing going for it right away (besides a great bargain on a good domain name, touch.com) in that it’s immediately available for Android, iOS and BlackBerry. No “Android version coming soon” or “BlackBerry? Why bother?” for them, and that’s a very good thing in terms of encouraging user adoption. That’s mostly because it isn’t entirely new; it was PingChat, but has been rebranded as Touch, along with the introduction of its new “experience” sharing features. But long-standing leaders in the space like WhatsApp Messenger also have cross-platform access covered, and also boast a lot of momentum, so it alone won’t guarantee success.

Group messaging: check.

Another thing Touch has covered is group messaging. You can add people to group chats, see participants at a glance via profile pics, and leave group chats whenever you wish just by swiping to delete the message thread in your main list view. It all works well, and as advertised (though Touch’s servers are having some sporadic trouble at launch, so there’s been a few issues with messages getting through) but you won’t find too much that isn’t available in Facebook Messenger here.

With one-on-one messages, you’ll get “Sent/Delivered/Read/” receipts, just like you would on BlackBerry Messenger. You can’t, however, turn off read receipts like you can on iMessage if you’d rather not let someone know whether you have or haven’t check out what they said.

Photo sharing: check.

Touch’s major changes revolve around “experience sharing.” Essentially, this is photo sharing, wherein you choose a picture from an existing album or take a new one, upload it to Touch and select friends to share with. You also choose a name for the experience, and then friends you share it with can comment. It also reports whether or not your friends have viewed what you share. In this way, Touch sort of competes with Path, or with Instagram, but with a much more private audience, since you handpick individuals to share with.

A capable product in a crowded market

Touch is a good app; it’s cleanly designed, easy to use and strips away unnecessary features and frills to make conversation the real focal point of the experience. But it’s also in a tough spot; I found it hard to find anyone I know using it, despite its having taken over PingChat’s reported 12 million users. Plus, for photo sharing, Path’s gorgeous version 2.0 has it beat in almost every way, besides the ability to be more selective with who sees your photos, and a landscape mode for browsing and composing.

There are some things that work in Touch’s favor, however, including the ability to limit sharing but in a better way than most dedicated private messaging solutions provide. Also, there’s an HTML5 version in the works, which could open up Touch’s cross-platform appeal to a very broad audience, since it’ll allow desktop and all tablet users to participate, too.

Touch has a lot of polish and a lot of promise, and beats the user experience of WhatsApp in my opinion, judging by my trials on Android and iPhone devices. But its staying power will depend on whether or not it can convince more users to jump on board; tough to do at this stage in the group messaging competition.

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WhatsApp is now delivering an eye-popping 1 billion messages a day on six different platforms, which it claims puts ahead of any other independent messaging apps. GOGII’s textPlus, for a little perspective, announced in June it had crossed the 10 billion text messages sent milestone since launching in June 2009. WhatsApp is the number one paid social networking app in the Apple App Store, and has more than 10 million downloads on Android with 369,270 user reviews, more than almost any other Android communication app. And it’s used in 250 countries on 750 networks. While the market has consolidated, WhatsApp has kept its head down and continued to execute.

Charging while competitors go free

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company has done this all while flouting some modern start-up conventions. While almost everyone else in the space distributes their app for free, WhatsApp charges 99 cents on iOS and $1.99 on other platforms for three years, with the first year free.

WhatsApp has spent no money on marketing and has actually actively avoided the spotlight, only granting one interview prior to this one. In an era in which entrepreneurs cozy up to bloggers and writers and tout every milestone, update and funding announcement, the WhatsApp team has prized its privacy and is only now starting to open up. And it’s not for attention; they just need more engineers. WhatsApp is almost entirely made up of engineers, who account for 17 their 20 employees. The rest are in customer support.

And the company hasn’t chased venture capital, though that hasn’t prevented it from taking some money. It received funding earlier this year from Sequoia, which it tried to keep private and only now is really acknowledging, though the amount is still a secret. The deal was unsolicited and was primarily strategic, said Jan Koum, WhatsApp’s CEO and co-founder.

CEO and co-founder Jan Koum

Less talk: Let the product speak for itself

It’s sort of odd that an app built around communication is made by a company that has shied away from really communicating its own story. But Koum, who formerly managed operations at Yahoo, told me WhatsApp reflects its founders. Koum and Co-Founder Brian Acton, a former Yahoo VP of engineering, are very product-focused, quiet and private individuals who don’t like advertising. They just like making a product that works.

“It’s less talk and let the product speak for itself,” said Koum. “People appreciate a good product, a stable system. They want to communicate easily and use a product that just works.”

Koum came up with WhatsApp in 2009 following a year off after leaving Yahoo. He initially envisioned an app that broadcasts your status when people can’t get a hold of you. He brought in Acton, who he worked with him at Yahoo and who also left the company at about the same time. The free status update system only attracted a few thousand users, but when WhatsApp added a messaging function in the second half of 2009, it took off. That’s also when the company moved to a paid model. It’s now available on iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7, Nokia S40  and Symbian S60.

Financial discipline on day one

Koum said the company has been able to charge because it has created a very robust, clean and focused product that doesn’t display advertising. And he said WhatsApp isn’t interested in using user data to target consumers with marketing messages. He said the decision to turn on a paid system early has helped the company become “cash flow positive,” and it has also allowed them to concentrate on improving the product without worrying about monetization. And they run a cheap ship, squeezing the most out of commodity hardware.

“You have to have financial discipline on day one or you’ll end up looking for that magic [when you] want to get profitable,” Koum said.

Co-founder Brian Acton

Koum said the company still has a long ways to go in improving the product, though he declines to say what’s on the roadmap. But he feels like if WhatsApp can continue to execute on its game plan, iterate quickly and stay focused, there’s no reason it can’t stay at the head of the messaging market. That’s still how he hopes to get the word out about WhatsApp, too: through users enjoying the product and telling others.

Staying independent

While consolidation is likely to continue in this space, Koum said he has no interest in selling and doesn’t talk about those options.

“We want to build a company that endures. We don’t want to build and flip. The space will consolidate more, but we feel uniquely positioned to provide a service that users can enjoy without us being aligned with one player,” Koum said.

I’ve heard other entrepreneurs say the same thing right before they turn around and sell. But the way things are going for Koum and his team, and the way they’ve gone about building WhatsApp, I wouldn’t be surprised if they stayed independent. It would just be another example of a unique company marching to the beat of its own drum.

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Well the start-up is set to reappear on BlackBerry devices with a new Java ME-based app  that will allow Kik to distribute the app directly to BlackBerry users from its website, sidestepping its ban in BlackBerry App world. Kik has rebuilt the app from the ground up, which has actually resulted in a more streamlined app that performs faster than the original native BlackBerry Kik app. Messages aren’t pushed from RIM’s servers but rather, are going through Kik’s servers.

Kik is taking advantage of the fact that BlackBerry Apps are built on two layers of code, first Java and then the actual BlackBerry OS. By building a Java ME app, it allows Kik to skirt around building on the BlackBerry OS, which it’s blocked from doing and allows Kik to distribute its Java ME apps on other feature phones that support it. And more importantly, it enables Kik to reestablish cross-platform service between iOS, Android and BlackBerry, a key differentiating point as Apple, RIM and Google push their own messaging platforms. Said Kik founder and CEO Ted Livingston:

“While we don’t think BlackBerry is necessarily the key to driving our success in the long term, we wanted to show our fans on the platform that we still cared and had not stopped innovating ways to bring them the fastest and cleanest messaging app available. Also, many of our existing users have friends/family on BlackBerrys, so giving them the means to connect with each other made good sense. We actually think the ‘cross-platform’ nature of mobile messaging is key – it’s very rare for someone’s social graph to be composed of a single device type.”

While the BlackBerry ban has been tough, it hasn’t stopped Kik from growing. It’s up to 4.5 million users, who are sending 300 million messages a month. But still, it’s a nice win to get back on BlackBerry devices, especially for a company built in the shadow of RIM. The feud with RIM hasn’t scared off investors either. The start-up raised $8 million in March from Union Square, RRE Ventures and Spark Capital. The patent case is still ongoing, and Livingston isn’t commenting on the litigation.

To get the app, you’ll need to download it here. And be warned, Research In Motion hadn’t approved this app, so you may have to wade through permissions to do a lot of things.

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For those who haven’t been following iOS 5, iMessage is an instant messaging service that works a lot like texting and MMS, but with added features like delivery and read receipts, and without the need for a texting plan from your cellular service provider. It will be available automatically for all iPhones, iPod touches and iPads that can run iOS 5, and you can receive messages at the email address of your choosing.

That means that when I receive a text from another iMessage user, it’ll show up on my iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, so that I can respond with whatever device happens to be closest. The catch is that only iOS users can play; iMessage isn’t cross-platform, and so far doesn’t extend to Apple’s desktop operating system, OS X. But uncovered in Lion’s iChat are two new unused lines of code that suggest we may see that change soon.

Specifically, the code makes reference to “timeDelivered” and “timeRead” fields, yet iChat doesn’t currently support either delivered or read receipts. iMessage, on the other hand, does. With OS X support, you could theoretically receive iMessages on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or Mac, making it even easier to read and respond wherever you happen to be working.

OS X support for iMessage is a logical next step, and one which I pointed out as a notable omission back when the service was first announced. User experience design firm teehan+lax posted an interesting conceptual look at how iMessage on the Mac might work, but simple iChat integration makes even more sense, since the iOS messaging app is based on the same UI to begin with.

FaceTime made the leap from mobile to desktop, and it seems unlikely Apple would have failed to notice the potential in iMessage doing the same. Let’s hope this makes the leap from small to big screen soon, like ideally right around when iOS 5 drops.

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ChatON will allow both smartphone and feature phone users to exchange text and multimedia messages; it can also push out calendar information and location updates. Samsung is playing up the fact that it will have international support in 120 countries and in 62 languages. It also has features such as animated messages, a multimedia repository for chat rooms called Trunk and an interaction rank to measure a person’s social activity.

But does the world need another free messaging service? It appears everyone now wants their own messaging platform following the success of Research In Motion’s BlackBerry Messenger. Apple is poised to launch iMessage on iOS 5 while Facebook recently released Facebook Messenger, built from its acquisition of Beluga. Google has its own group messaging app called Huddle that’s part of its Google+ service and has other communications applications like Google Chat and Google Voice. Skype also just bought GroupMe, which will benefit not only Skype but Microsoft as well, which is in the process of buying Skype. And all of these compete with existing independent group messaging apps like WhatsApp, textPlus, Kik, Fast Society and many others.

Samsung sells about as many smartphones as Apple so it’s not surprising they want to jump into the group messaging game as well. And with a cross-platform service, it could have more appeal than iMessage, which will work with iOS devices but will also utilize standard text messaging when a recipient doesn’t have iMessage. It’s unclear if ChatON will also utilize SMS.

But at some point, it’s hard to see all of these messaging services succeeding. People may like group messaging services, but they don’t want to run multiple chat applications. There’s going to be a shake out soon as people start migrating to a smaller group of applications. Samsung could be part of that group, but at this point, it’s just playing another game of me-too.

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You can see all recent activity on multiple conversations in the Boards tab.

Updated: Group messaging and conversation apps are everywhere these days, and it seems barely a day goes by before we hear about another major player trying to get in the game, like Skype with its GroupMe acquisition. But despite all the competition, a new entrant with a less-is-more approach and emphasis on privacy might be just what some users (particularly those in business) are looking for. That’s exactly what the new iPhone app Glassboard offers.

Glassboard is the latest from Mac and iOS developer Sepia Labs, run by Brian Brent Simmons, the guy who created popular RSS reader NetNewsWire and desktop blogging tool MarsEdit. The new app is, as mentioned, designed around group messaging with a special focus on privacy. Users of the app create boards to which they can add users via email invites. Glassboard doesn’t plug into any of your social networks, and the only person who can add members to a board is the board’s original creator.

Finding and viewing boards is impossible unless you’re a member, and any content shared won’t be indexed for search. Board creators also have the power to revoke membership and delete boards instead of just leaving the conversation, something that isn’t an option with other messaging apps like Google+’s Huddle, for example.

Threaded replies and likes for messages within conversations is a nice advantage for Glassboard.

Glassboard also has some nice usability advantages over its competitors, including the ability to assign a picture to each board in order to make it much easier to see at a glance which is which. You can also share images in conversations, as well as text, video and location data, and each message posted can be liked or replied to directly via commenting. It adds up to a much more collaboration-oriented experience.

Other options that you might recognize from Facebook Messenger, Google+ Huddle or GroupMe are also present, like the ability to mute conversations individually or globally and whether to receive push notifications, email notices or both. The app also has one limitation that might prove aggravating but that makes sense from the perspective of encouraging growth: You can only create three new boards to start and then you’re granted new boards for each new invitee who joins the system.

With such a crowded field, Glassboard might have a tough time achieving mainstream success, but it might need to. Its primary appeal, from my perspective, is as an easy way for workplace teams who depend on mobile devices to stay in touch (like a small distributed sales force, for example) and collaborate without having to worry about distraction from their social networks. Glassboard is also available on Android and Windows Phone 7 platforms too, so using it doesn’t depend on what kind of mobile device your teammates are using.

Ed: A previous version of this article incorrectly identified Brent Simmons as Brian Simmons.

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GroupMe subsequently took off like wild-fire by quickly introducing a number of messaging features, which is what helped it get the attention of Skype, who just bought GroupMe for a reported $85 million. But while the deal obviously revolved around messaging and communications, a big motivator for Martocci and Hecht in accepting the sale, and presumably Skype in acquiring GroupMe, was also GroupMe’s shot at going back to its original potential as a tool for making monetized group decisions.

That’s something Skype CEO Tony Bates mentions right off the bat in his description of GroupMe in the official blog post announcing the deal, saying the messaging start-up “helps users stay in touch and make decisions.”

Hecht and Martocci told me this morning that they’re excited about accelerating the work behind helping people make online decisions for offline activities. This could mean things like friends heading out for a night on the town or going specifically to an event like Lollapalooza. As Martocci told me last week, there are a lot of opportunities in monetizing these highly contextual groups. That’s going to be a big push for GroupMe, and something that will get more attention in early 2012. It seems to tie into the growing market for delivering local discounts and offers to consumers via their mobile device, something Groupon, Google, Foursquare and many others are also looking at.

GroupMe founders Jared Hecht and Steve Martocci

“We want people to do things better in the real world. By taking simple everyday tools like a mobile device, we can show them an offer,” Hecht said. “We don’t think of this as an ad but as a feature. We have a unique opportunity to add content through context and people communicating in real time to help them make decisions without getting in the way.”

GroupMe’s founders are mum on details of how this will work. But the company has been moving in this direction, introducing featured groups that allow brands to organize conversations around their products and properties. The Oxygen network, for example, launched a group around Paris Hilton’s show. GroupMe has also worked with Lollapalooza and Showtime’s Dexter  on mobile apps that let people tap GroupMe for messaging. These groups and apps organize around specific themes and products and could be a way for advertisers to target consumers. And if GroupMe can also tie into the conversations people are having about upcoming events, it can help facilitate commerce by bringing in relevant offers.

That’s something GroupMe’s Steve Cheney, who joined the company in January to help lead business development, talked about in a blog post this morning. He said by combining with Skype, GroupMe can not only help disrupt communications but can also drive new use cases for commerce in the emerging peer-to-peer economy:

The peer to peer economy is driving unprecedented intelligence to the edge of the network, and messaging is just the first wedge in helping individuals and groups make decisions and take actions instantaneously. When I talked about Groupon closing the redemption loop a few months ago, I was adamant that a mobile commerce layer and a social / communication layer are being built out that will have unprecedented impacts on how we interact and consume things with friends in our physical environments. At our core, humans are social, and friends drive a lot of our decision-making and actions. Where traditional telecom allowed fairly static connections between people, the mobile internet is driving a new peer to peer economy where people not only instantaneously connect with each other, but take actions to consume, share and enrich their real-world lives.

So it’s not just a communications play for Skype and GroupMe; it’s Skype’s chance to get into the game on real-time local offers, but from a communications perspective. That’s a sensible approach, considering Skype’s core strengths, and represents a sizable opportunity if GroupMe can execute. And if it works, it won’t just work for GroupMe’s audience, but should ultimately help Skype’s 175 million users and potentially benefit Microsoft, which is in the process of buying Skype. 

There’s a lot that needs to happen yet, and I’m curious how intent in conversations can be turned into relevant offers that don’t appear too stalkerish. But it’s a good sign for Skype’s business that the company is thinking not just about communicating, but about how to derive money from those conversations.

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