New Babes in Social Networking
With the rapidly expanding popularity of the micro-blog text byte, it was only a matter of due course that micro-vlogging would be next.
Step aside you ten-minute rambling vlogs on YouTube and Myspace, here comes QIK which hosts and promotes video communiques, updates, and dispatches from mobile devices that are less than 60 seconds long.
QIK’s motto: “Mobile live video sharing for everyone, everywhere!”
The Technology: Patent Pending
QIK’s focus is on developing the perfect mobile video platform, providing the highest quality of live video experience across all devices and networks.
The company explains:
“Right from start, we recognized that providing the fastest, best quality, most reliable video from cell phones requires an approach that can efficiently adapt to various device, network and environmental conditions.”
The key attributes of thieir patent-pending platform are:
Fast: It’s all making the video truly live in order to enable real-time interaction through chat. QIK tags the stream at every path it takes, from the instant a person clicks the Stream button to the video appearing on the web. The entire path is then analyzed, weighed against various parameters and optimized to ensure speed of delivery. This has led to achieving latency as low as half a second to three seconds for our live video streams.
Best Possible Quality: QIK developers claim to be ” obsessed with quality.” Aren’t all code peeps? They are developing the best possible video quality from mobile devices using several techniques for which they have filed patents (USPO #60/989,711). These techniques concern examining and assigning importance to the resources available on the device and network, making multiple passes at the stream to ensure good quality. “This is focused not only on the live stream, but also on progressively improving quality for viewers who start viewing mid-stream and for playback after the stream is completed.”
Most Reliable: “We understand that every moment is important and being able to capture that reliably is of paramount importance to our users. So, whether your phone battery dies mid-stream or you are in a place where there is no network—Qik has you covered.” QIK has innovated on multiple techniques to enable this capability and reliability.
Simple and Secure: QIK claims to analyze each step so that every action is quick and simple, “yet ensures the security and privacy of the user.”
Seven Points
It would appear that QIK will be quick to catch on. Their business model is sound. What can we learn from this brand — what can we appropriate into our brands and advertising and achieve a %300 ROI?
1. The Now. This company foresaw the popularity of micro-blogging in text, with video to follow. This no doubt is due to watching closely the market trends and considering what social networking-minded wanted/needed for the future.
2. Celebrity Use. QIK has seversal celebrities using the platform. Fans follow celebrities. This viral campiagn and popular endoresement proves to be worth every penny invested. See the mobile vids by Demi Moore.
3. Usability. The website is easy to navigate and pleasing to the eye (though they should consider getting rid of the puke green borders).
4. Free. Everyone loves free apps.
5. Ego-friendly. People love to see their adorable faces on a screen, even a little screen of an iPhone or a mini-notebook. Play to the ego, all advertsiers know this.
6. Relevance. Like Twitter, micro-vlogging engages in immediate consumer relevance to life, play, and commerce.
7. Viral For All. Like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, QIK can be used for viral marketing of brands, ideas, and events.
We predict that “doing it QIK” will be the new Tweet toward the end of the year.
“Did you see her Qik-see today?”
“Today I shall Qikker.”
“To Twitter is to flitter, but Qikker is like liquor.”
“I vid, therefore I Qeek.”
Tomorrow’s Options
What’s next? Perhaps YOU have the forthcoming brilliant social networking platform lodged in your cranium matter, waiting to become a reaity. And perhaps the team
at Ninthlink can help you “make it so,” as Captain Jean Luc Picard used to say.
Let’s do it.
!@now, yo