Today Qik, the popular mobile streaming solution, officially entered public beta. Now anyone with a data plan and the right type supported cell phone can sign up and join the fun. Go to http://qik.com/sign_up to get more information on the supported handsets.On the Qik blog, Co-founder Bhaskar Roy says,
"Can't express how excited we are to be have reached this stage where Qik is now transitioning from an Invitation-only Alpha to Public Beta with additional features, integrations and additional handset support. Even though we are announcing public beta today, July 21 2008, from today till end f July we'll be trickling in various features. All I can say is "see what happens" these remaining days of July :)"Many blogs covered the news today and shared the similar stories which are covered on the Qik blog such as the new Key Features (Groups, Events, New Player, Reduced Latency, Playback on phones using resident RSS reader, Sign up on Mobile Device), New Distribution Partners (Facebook, MySpace, Orkut or develop you own integration using oEmbed and Media RSS "(a) CoverItLive: the live blogging service now has live video blogging with Qik. Details here. (b) iPoki: A location based service now shows location of Qiks and Qikkers. Details here.")
has a post Qik launches public beta. New phones, new carriers and new features abound that includes a chat he had with Bhaskar Roy and director of marketing, Jackie Danicki, to go over some of the new features. Andy Plesser of Beet.TV talked with Bhaskar Roy in this video about the uses of Qik prior to the today's public beta announcement. Andy also recommends "For an in depth user experience, check out this account by CNET's Daniel Terdiman."
Contrary to Robert Scoble's post last month on TechCrunch, Why Kyte.tv will kill Qik and Flixwagon in cell phone video space, it appears that Qik is alive and well and thriving in an integrated online video ecosystem.
I've been having a lot of fun with Qik the last week using a Nokia N95 that is on loan from WOM/ World Nokia and I recorded this short Qik video to accompany this post.
Currently there are over 76,000 Qik videos on the site from an estimated user base of a several thousand according to Reel SEO Video Marketing with high profile users like Scoble and US Congressman Jon Culberson to everyday people from all over the world like you and me. So go sign up and see what happens.
