Kik Messenger Is Shutting Down

Kik Messenger is one of the most popular messengers used by teenagers from all over the world. A lot of you must have used it at some point in time. Even with millions of active users, Kik Messenger app is going to shut down.

What forced Kik messenger to shut down?

In this case, it looks like they want to focus on a cryptocurrency which they introduced i.e “Kin”. So, in an effort to divert the resources available for Kin, Kik messenger is shutting down.

Ted Livingston, the founder of Kik & Kin, announced this in a medium blog post today.

However, it was not an easy decision. They were forced to make the announcement because of legal trouble with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over its cryptocurrency Kin.

After 18 months of discussions with the SEC, they gave a choice to either declare Kin as security or fight them in court. Kin Foundation chose to fight back – however, they did not have enough resources to take on SEC in court.

So, instead of selling some of their Kin into limited liquidity, they decided to shut down Kik which involves more than 100 employees. It is definitely a bad day for the employees while some have families to support and this is not something they would have seen coming after working for years on improving Kik for what it is today.

In addition to this decision, they have also decided to have 19 employees for Kin only. While working and promoting a cryptocurrency sounds ambitious – laying off people working for a successful service is shocking.

What do you think about this decision? Is it a wise choice to focus on cryptocurrency by shutting down a service that helped them from ground up? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Ankush Das
Categories: Cellphones