AgenciesBengaluru: Hike Pvt. Ltd., backed by Tiger Global and Tencent Holdings, has shut down its homegrown messaging app Hike Sticker Chat in order to pivot to other social products.
"The time has finally come for us to bid farewell to Hike Sticker Chat. Thank you for your love, trust and support,” the company said on Twitter. “Our relationship with you means the world to us, and so we are looking forward to seeing you on our new and exciting apps.
Users will be able to download all their data from within the app.
The development comes nearly a fortnight after Hike’s chief executive officer Kavin Bharti Mittal announced plans to sunset the service in January 2021. The app debuted as Hike Messenger in December 2012 and had notched up about 100 million registered users as of August 2016. It was rebranded as Hike Sticker Chat with a sticker-centric experience in April 2019. Earlier this month, Mittal said that "millions were spending about 35 mins per day on the app."
The company is now offering these stickers on the new 'Stickers by Hike' app that allow users to use them across all messaging apps. It is currently available as a free download on Android with an iOS app in the works.
This shutdown, however, comes at a time when several messaging apps—such as Signal and Telegram— are witnessing significant growth in user base, in a reaction to WhatsApp updating its privacy policy and terms of service to share more user data with its parent Facebook.
Signal beat not only WhatsApp but also Facebook and Instagram in weekly India downloads with 3.3 million downloads in the January 5-11 period, ET reported last week.
Last week, Mittal said on Twitter that global network effects are too strong for India to have its own messenger. He also noted that Signal and Telegram have the “right incentives as entities” for consumers unlike Facebook’s products.
Hike is now focusing on two social products—an approval-only virtual hangout platform Vibe (Previously Hikeland) and mobile gaming service Rush.
"With Vibe and Rush, we now have two virtual worlds that focus on a single 'Job to be Done' each thus simplifying the UX. A much better approach for today's world that is unconstrained by cheap, fast data & powerful smartphones." Mittal had said last week.
"The time has finally come for us to bid farewell to Hike Sticker Chat. Thank you for your love, trust and support,” the company said on Twitter. “Our relationship with you means the world to us, and so we are looking forward to seeing you on our new and exciting apps.
1/ The time has finally come for us to bid farewell to Hike Sticker Chat. Thank you for your love, trust and suppor… https://t.co/Thy0omw9DW
— Hike (@hikeapp) 1610648944000Users will be able to download all their data from within the app.
The development comes nearly a fortnight after Hike’s chief executive officer Kavin Bharti Mittal announced plans to sunset the service in January 2021. The app debuted as Hike Messenger in December 2012 and had notched up about 100 million registered users as of August 2016. It was rebranded as Hike Sticker Chat with a sticker-centric experience in April 2019. Earlier this month, Mittal said that "millions were spending about 35 mins per day on the app."
12/ Today we're announcing that we will be sunsetting StickerChat in Jan'21.We thank you all for giving us your t… https://t.co/788yd5WVMB
— Kavin Bharti Mittal (@kavinbm) 1609908533000The company is now offering these stickers on the new 'Stickers by Hike' app that allow users to use them across all messaging apps. It is currently available as a free download on Android with an iOS app in the works.
This shutdown, however, comes at a time when several messaging apps—such as Signal and Telegram— are witnessing significant growth in user base, in a reaction to WhatsApp updating its privacy policy and terms of service to share more user data with its parent Facebook.
Signal beat not only WhatsApp but also Facebook and Instagram in weekly India downloads with 3.3 million downloads in the January 5-11 period, ET reported last week.
Last week, Mittal said on Twitter that global network effects are too strong for India to have its own messenger. He also noted that Signal and Telegram have the “right incentives as entities” for consumers unlike Facebook’s products.
Hike is now focusing on two social products—an approval-only virtual hangout platform Vibe (Previously Hikeland) and mobile gaming service Rush.
"With Vibe and Rush, we now have two virtual worlds that focus on a single 'Job to be Done' each thus simplifying the UX. A much better approach for today's world that is unconstrained by cheap, fast data & powerful smartphones." Mittal had said last week.