If you've spent any time at all browsing the multitude of Instagram photos or Vine mini-videos, there's a good chance that you've seen posts with captions containing the phrase "KiK me" or those that include a Kik username. Kik Messenger has become the de facto standard for instant messaging among the new generation of mobile social communicators. It differs from competitors like WhatsApp and Viber by not requiring your phone number, but it too lets you include photos in your messages and engage in group chat.

Setup and Signup
I tested Kik Messenger on two phones, a Nokia Lumia 928's and a Samsung ATIV Odyssey. Signing up for a Kik account is a matter of entering your first and last names, a username, an email address, and password. The signup form recommends, but doesn't require entering you phone number. I really wish you could just sign up with your Facebook or Twitter credentials, though; all this filling in forms is so 2005.

The signup procedure asks if you want Kik to scan your address book for existing users of the service. Any user found will get a notification that they can now chat with you over Kik. In general, I had a much easier time connecting with my pals in Kik than in WhatsApp; I could also send invites to email or Facebook.

The Kik Windows Phone app has just two swipe-through pages: Contacts, and Conversations, making it one simpler than WhatsApp. On the Conversations tab, you can tap a gear button to get to settings for things like Notifications, Account, Privacy (you can add users to a block list), and interface color.  It would be nice to be able to change the font and font size, but the color choice is already more personalization than you get with WhatsApp.

Kik has no pretensions of creating rich profiles the way that's become standard with social networks: You don't have to enter any personal info. Your contact info page is just a photo and your username.

Messaging
Kik was an innovator with its ability to show you whether your contact had read your message or not. When you first send a text, an S appears in a small box to its left; this turns to a D to indicated "delivered," and then to an R when the message has actually been read by the contact.

When it comes to energizing conversations with extra goodies, Kik lets you insert the standard selection of smilies to your chat, but they're not as impactful as Facebook Messenger's stickers. You also don't get as many message attachment options in the Windows Phone version of Kik as you do in the iPhone version: things like video sketches, YouTube videos, and memes (those photos with the big block text). But if an iPhone contact adds any of this, you'll be able to see it in the Windows Phone app. Nor can you create a video or audio message the way you can in WhatsApp. And forget about actual voice calling like you get with Viber or video calling like you get with Skype.

One thing you can do is engage in group chatting. Kik makes this a simple matter of tapping a big plus sign after tapping the Convo Info button at the bottom of the chat screen. You can add up to 10 group members, and anyone can leave at any time, using the same Convo Info page.

Will You Get a Kick Out of this App?

The choice of a messaging app depends a lot on whether people you want to chat with are using it. Though pretty bare-bones, Kik for Windows Phone has loads of users and a few good things going for it—its very simplicity is one of them. Kik also provides more privacy than competitors like WhatsApp and Viber, which require your cell phone number. That also means you don't have to worry about a small app developer ever selling your number to marketers. Another plus over WhatsApp is that you don't have to see ads in your inbox. But if you want free, ad-free, privacy protecting text messaging, stick with our Editors' Choice, Skype[], which adds voice and video chat.