Kin Ambassadors Event 2018: Kik’s Product Team on Integrating Kin (Recap #3)
“We have a really creative, diverse set of users in Kik, and what we want to do is build tools to empower them. We want to create a platform where they can drive value for each other, and then we can reward them based on that value. It’s deeply ingrained in Kin that this is a problem we’ve faced, and something we can uniquely solve.” — Mike Roberts
At the Kin Ambassadors Event April 11–12, our community members got a firsthand look at how Kik is building that platform for value exchange around Kin.
Our 28 attendees heard from three top members of Kik’s team — Mike Roberts, VP of product and engineering; Laura Newton, product manager; and Ashton Rankin, product manager — about forthcoming Kik features with Kin at their core.
Read a few highlights on exciting features below, then watch the full video above to learn how Kik will capitalize on monetization opportunities as the first member of the Kin Ecosystem. Wallets, personalization tools, and chat themes are just the beginning. On the roadmap: Incentivizing (and fairly compensating) creators for making great content that resonates.
On Kik
“[We’ve always had] really impressive level of engagement, and this power to connect developers with communities. We also have this power to connect people to people on our platform, right? We have that in our DNA about meeting new people — it’s about making friends.
“But we always had one missing piece of the puzzle in all of these platforms [we built into the application]. Build, grow and monetize. If you’re going to build a product that’s gonna engage users, it’s really important that you can actually benefit from that. But we didn’t want to play the two games that were out there — either extract revenue from a bunch of whales using all these dark product patterns…or play against Facebook’s monopoly.
“There’s probably a third way, right? Kin is our three. We can use Kin inside Kik to actually drive real usage for a real audience.” — Mike Roberts
Giving users more
“A user need we have at Kik is to provide personalization options, and Kin can meet that personalization need. Historically we’ve launched lots of personalization features… but our users always want more.
“They also want to be able to get niche content. [With things like topical memes in pop culture], we can talk about it, but we can’t pull the content into Kik. We can’t have users get their hands on it and play with it — and that’s what we want to facilitate. So how do we do that? We need to empower users to become creators and then compensate them for it.
“So how do we get there? First we’re integrating the kin SDK into Kik, getting it in the hands of users getting wallets created and can in their wallets. Second, we’re launching a personalization feature specifically starting with themes. A third, we’re expanding it to users to be able to create their content to create these themes. And then lastly, we want to facilitate the consumer to consumer value exchange.” — Laura Newton
Seizing opportunity
“Kik is more than just a utility messenger. Our opportunity is connecting users online. We know about half of our users come to Kik specifically for meeting other Kik users and 72% want more ways to do just that. 35% of users turn to our open platform to meet other users today. Kin is a unique solution for influencing positive interactions and really enhancing [that] experience.” — Ashton Rankin
Compensating creative energy
“When we look at Kin at Kik, we’re trying to figure out how can we utilize this cryptocurrency to solve the problems that our users have and that we as a company have. And this is a great opportunity for us because we can compensate those creators they’re putting in the time they have the creative energy. Now we can use kin to harness that and take some of the pressure off kick as a company to meet all of these user needs.” — Laura Newton
Stay tuned for more recaps! Learn more about the Kin Ambassadors Event here.
