Messaging apps are the flavor of this year, as evidenced by_Facebook’s $19 billion WhatsApp deal, but lately we’ve barely heard from Kik, the Canadian startup that beats WhatsApp, Snapchat and others in the US market. Until now, that is, after it launched its own virtual currency. ‘Kik Points’ quietly went live this week among selected users. It appears to be a cross between a virtual currency (to_buy content) and a mechanism for incentivizing its young userbase to be more active_inside the app. Kik users can earn Points for undertaking certain tasks — in my case, it was browsing Reddit from...

This story continues at The Next Web