July 16, 2007

FlickIM: Bored Startup Makes Awesome IM for the iPhone

Nick Gonzalez

36 comments »

One of the first things stealth social internet startup Next3 did with their $1.6 million in financing was to buy every employee an iPhone. It made them painfully aware of the poor state of iPhone apps, particularly IM. So naturally, being hackers, they threw together their own in a week, dubbed FlickIM.

FlickIM is an AIM only chat program for iPhone’s Safari browser. It lets you log in to AIM and chat with your existing buddy list with limited lag. From what we saw, it ran about twice as fast as Meebo’s iPhone chat application.

It may be enough just to get AIM on your iPhone, but FlickIM also lets you easily search for and send links to YouTube videos and Apple movie trailers over IM by typing /y or /t before the search term. It pops up a window where you can pick the right video. Since your EDGE connection over AT&T can be spotty, FlickIM will save messages if your friends IM while you’re offline.

Next3 is backed by Peter Theil and Alsop-Louie, and was started by Facebook employee number nine Darian Shirazi with his friend David Mcintosh. They plan to launch their product later this fall.

Sphere It

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Comments

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Jason

July 16th, 2007 at 1:26 pm

It keeps giving me an “invalid user/pass.” Any ideas on why it isn’t working? I am definitely inputting it correctly, and I know others are having the same problem.
Steve

July 16th, 2007 at 1:28 pm

It’s too busy logging all your information/username/password to work correctly.
NotSteve

July 16th, 2007 at 1:31 pm

Why you called this an application, while it is a website?
Tim

July 16th, 2007 at 1:43 pm

AIM, as in AOL Instant Messenger…

Why AIM? I can’t stand anything that has to do with AOL.

Hopefully they can add in other IM programs in the future. That would be great.
immad

July 16th, 2007 at 1:57 pm

All ICQ logins work on Aim-enabled clients so it’s actually got an enormous possible userbase. Though I guess both AIM and ICQ are on the way out, maybe non-techies still use them.
Dave

July 16th, 2007 at 1:58 pm

Worst… Privacy…. Policy… ever…
Drew

July 16th, 2007 at 2:08 pm

Is it even relevant to reference that guy as “employee #9 at facebook” ? Or is it to somehow add legitimacy to otherwise unrecognizable names?
jamie thingbox

July 16th, 2007 at 2:16 pm

Wow - their privacy policy is pretty brutal.
Michael

July 16th, 2007 at 2:20 pm

Hey everyone,

We’ve encountered some kinks with the new heavy server load, but we’re sorting them out. If you have any concerns of if you’ve found any more bugs, please email me at michael@flickim.com. I won’t bite, I promise.
Bogdan

July 16th, 2007 at 2:36 pm

Could someone please post a photo of a screen where you actually type AND see the lines written above? From what I saw in the above photo, there isn’t much space left for the keyboard on the touchscreen.
Greg

July 16th, 2007 at 2:37 pm

Tim (#4): Because you’re in the minority. AIM is pretty much the default IM account, so everyone’s friends are on it, so everyone has to be on it. AIM is like MySpace: Not the best by a mile, but it’s hit that tipping point where everyone uses it, so if you want to be on their buddy list, you have to use it, too.

Personally, I use Gaim on all my machines because the AIM client blows, but almost all of my contacts are on AIM, so if a product doesn’t support AOL IM, I won’t (can’t) use it.

I’d like to see more compatibility, too, once it’s out of beta, but I’m also aware that the first and biggest thing you need to succeed in that space is AIM access.
David

July 16th, 2007 at 3:10 pm

Hi Everyone,
This is David from FlickIM. I appreciate your comments, we’re working day and night to make sure FlickIM is up and running. We’re very open minded to adding features to the site, so please email us at support@FlickIM.com if you would like to see a feature added.

We are testing FlickIM and currently have not noticed any login problems, but if you are having trouble logging in, please email us at support@flickim.com and we’ll look into it.

We appreciate the concerns voiced about the privacy policy, and a result we consulted Tara Lemmey, former President of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. After our conversation with her, we revised the policy, and posted it at http://www.flickim.com/privacystatement.html. We are applying for a TRUSTe seal to assure you that we will respect your privacy as we move forward.

Thanks again for your comments, and enjoy FlickIM!
Vijay Chakravarthy

July 16th, 2007 at 3:10 pm

And pray, what is facebook employee #8 up to?
Viet

July 16th, 2007 at 3:54 pm

I want to see how far I can hold off till getting an iPhone.
gilltots

July 16th, 2007 at 3:58 pm

so since this guy is from facebook does that mean he stole this code from someplace else?

bwahahaha.

taint! taint!!
Caleb Wu

July 16th, 2007 at 4:57 pm

LOL. “employee #9″. who cares? I wonder what employee #27 is up to!
the Grin

July 16th, 2007 at 5:02 pm

the biggest problem of all this chat is that they keep always an open connection using a lot of battery… i wish apple will release ichat soon, that should be a push system so you don’t have to use so much battery just waiting for an answer…
Tien Nguyen

July 16th, 2007 at 5:20 pm

Are there any IM apps for Windows Mobile devices?
aandarian

July 16th, 2007 at 5:46 pm

ahahahaha @#15 niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice
Jean-Michel Decombe

July 16th, 2007 at 7:03 pm

Looks really nice. Not sure what their plans are for the future since Apple *will* release an iPhone version of iChat that will make them basically irrelevant. Probably mobile crossplatform compatibility… Anyway, until Apple gets the job done, thanks for the effort, it is appreciated!
Jon

July 17th, 2007 at 12:12 am

what i really want to know is what 007 (aka F#7) is up to these days…
Tomi

July 17th, 2007 at 2:14 am

“Why you called this an application, while it is a website?”

The term “web app” comes to mind.
Concrete Stain

July 17th, 2007 at 1:33 pm

Mike - I am wondering the relevancy of #7 too …

- This is a good application maybe not TC worthy but good.
B

July 18th, 2007 at 8:45 am

Anyone else gettig a java pop up error ?

JAVASCRIPT
‘\x00\x16′

Thats what i see after logging in
marie

July 19th, 2007 at 11:19 am

For all of you IM lovers, check out heysan! In addition to AIM, heysan! supports MSN and ICQ and soon also Yahoo and GTalk. The app is free and also works very well for those who’s not fortunate enough to posess an iPhone….
Robert

July 23rd, 2007 at 9:31 am

Heysan! looks pretty basic. I prefer FlickIM for my iPhone. It’s faster and has a better UI. I really like how responsive the FlickIM team has been to suggestions.