Hike Messenger, India’s first home-grown messaging platform announced it is rolling out a brand new feature-Stories. Stories is a new way for people on Hike to share their lives and real moments with their friends through photos (that you can post immediately starting today) and videos (that also you will be able to post in the next few weeks). Stories are ephemeral and vanish 48 hours after being posted, quite like real life where everyday moments are experienced, and are not etched in history forever. A user who posts a story can see how many people and who all viewed that particular story.
Hike also announced that it launched its own Camera built into the app making it extremely quick and easy for people to snap photos right inside of Hike. In addition to that, it announced Live filters, a brand new feature that uses Hike’s new camera to automatically detect and recognize a user’s face using Machine Learning and allows people to very easily decorate their faces in photos. Hike has 12 Live filters available at launch, ranging from a cool Black and White Sunglasses, to a Turban and a Moustache and many more.
Stories on Hike are made for India-a Sight and Sound country where more and more users are shifting to a visual form of communication on chat, especially after the arrival of 4G.
Commenting on the launch, Kavin Bharti Mittal, Founder & CEO, Hike Messenger said
Hike has become the place for the youth of India where they can be themselves. With over 100 Million users, Hike is a testament to that. One of our goal for 2016 has been to bring photos at the centre of Hike and with Stories and Live Filters, we are doing just that. We believe our users are going to love Stories, Camera and Live Filters we are announcing today, especially with increasing access to cheaper and faster data.
What makes Stories a lot of fun is the new Camera and the Live Filters built on top of it. I really believe that Camera is the new keyboard. It is the most natural way for humans to communicate and express themselves. What’s really interesting about this new update is that we are now chartering into the realm of AR where we are going from Smartphones with Cameras that just take photos, to Smartphones with Eyes that can see!. That’s an incredible thought. Live Filters ais just the beginning and we are sure Hikers are going to have a ton of fun using them.
Stories is replacing what was earlier the Timeline on Hike.Stories, the all new Camera and Live Filters on Hike are being rolled out starting today across Android and iOS.
About Hike Messenger
Hike is simplifying how people connect and interact with content and services on mobile. As of January 2016, Hike has over 100 million users. 95% of Hike users are based in India and 90% of them are below the age of 30. Hike users, on an average, exchange 40 billion messages per month and spend 120 min. per user per week on the platform. For more information, please visit Hike