Traditionally, Skype has been built all around more or less synchronous conversations; whether audio, video, or instant message, Skype chats have tended to be realtime conversational communication. Today, the company is branching out with a new standalone messaging app, Skype Qik, built around asynchronous video messaging, available for Windows Phone, Android, and iOS.

I think the best way to describe Qik is by analogy to other mobile messaging platforms. Like WhatsApp, Qik has no real registration or user ID concept; it just uses your phone number, verified by SMS message. The app ties into your phone's address book to put names to numbers, and it seems that to send a message to someone, they must in fact be in your address book. There are no friendships or other formal relationships, so anyone can send a message to anyone, but if you don't want someone to send you messages, you can block them (though currently this feature is missing from the iOS version).









Like Vine and Snapchat, Qik messages are short videos, with a limit of 42 seconds (a number that was apparently chosen for its cosmic significance). These can be recorded with the front or back cameras. On iOS and Android (and coming later to Windows Phone), Qik also lets you save short (5 second) messages, called Qik Fliks, that you can use as canned responses for when you want to reply to a conversation but aren't somewhere that you can record a video response.

With a nod in Snapchat's direction, Qik is also somewhat ephemeral. Qik messages will last for two weeks, after which they're deleted. During that two-week period, the sender can also erase any message they've sent, even if the recipient or recipients haven't watched them yet.

If a message recipient doesn't have the app, they'll be sent an SMS instructing them to install it.

The Qik workflow is also very Snapchat-like; to start a conversation, you record a video, then pick a contact or contacts to send it to. Open an existing conversation and there's one-button access to start recording your reply.

Skype claims that Qik fills a gap that Skype doesn't. Because of Skype's conversational nature, the company says, it's less suitable for spontaneous, ad hoc communication. This is, however, a little surprising, as last year the company added a feature, video messaging, to enable precisely this: with Skype video messages, you can send recorded videos, rather than live two-way chat, to any Skype contacts.

That said, Skype didn't do a very good job of displaying the feature in its various clients, so it's easy to ignore or forget about. The use of phone numbers—rather than Skype accounts—perhaps adds some immediacy and makes it easier to blast a message to someone (or get started with the app itself), as there's no need to mess with usernames or passwords.

Honestly, this app, much like WhatsApp, serves mainly to make me feel old and out of touch. The use of phone numbers seems strangely anachronistic—I thought we'd moved away from this kind of numeric ID when we stopped using ICQ—and strangely limited. I communicate with plenty of people whose phone numbers I just don't know, because I've simply never need to. I have e-mail and Twitter and Facebook and Skype IDs for these people already, and unlike their phone numbers, these IDs are all self-chosen and hence linked to their personas. And I'm not just talking about online acquaintances here; it's true of real-life friends.

I can't deny that WhatsApp is tremendously popular, however, so there's always a chance that Qik will break out and become a big hit. WhatsApp has its own video messaging, but since it defaults to text messaging, the workflow isn't as streamlined as Qik's (or Snapchat's), so competing services may have some opportunity to edge it out.

One oddity about Qik is that it has no business model. The app is free, there are no ads, and there are no unlockable premium features. This isn't an issue for something like WhatsApp, because there the revenue model is simply "get bought out by a big company with lots of money," but with Skype being a part of Microsoft, that doesn't seem to be an option. Skype tells us that it doesn't see an issue with this, because Qik messaging is a complement to conversational Skype messaging, filling in a gap in the Skype world.

I'm not sure how true this really is, though; Qik's use of phone numbers rather than Skype accounts means that it serves two different communities, with neither one a subset of the other. Even if I wanted to send a Qik message to one of my Skype contacts, I often wouldn't be able to, because we do not know each other's phone numbers.

Qik is available today and should be in the App Store, Play Store, and Windows Phone Store at or around the time you're reading this.