Of late, Hike Messenger has been introducing new features in order to stay in contention with its rival WhatsApp. Today, the homegrown messaging platform announced the launch of Hike ID, which is a unique identity that removes the hassle of sharing your mobile number with others. Hike ID is something like a UPI ID, which will act as your identity. Hike introduced this feature to increase the privacy.
Hike says that it's also easy to search for someone with their Hike ID, so one no longer needs to go through the cumbersome process of saving a mobile number before being able to send a message. Essentially Hike HD makes the job a lot easier in three ways: Firstly, privacy: with the Hike ID, there's no need for one to share their mobile number. Secondly, just search for the Hike ID, and you're good to go to connect with anyone, and lastly, removes the hassle of saving a person's number to get connected.
In a blog post, the company stated that Hike ID was a direct response from to the feedback from its users. Before rolling out the feature, Hike conducted a survey in which over 1 million users participated. In the survey, two results stood out- "69% of the respondents said that they’d like to talk to people without sharing their phone numbers first and over 72% said that they want to skip the hassle of saving someone’s number before talking to them. Hike ID is the perfect solution to these two problems?—?making your phone number private along with adding a layer of convenience for easy messaging and calling."
Pathik Shah, VP Product at Hike commented that Hike ID would be the future of Hike and it will be integrated across all the services on Hike whether it be people, groups or services.
Hike users on Android will be able to create and share their Hike ID within a week. Hike ID will be available for iOS users by the end of this month.