No doubt you’ve heard of Kik and likely use it to message your friends. It’s a great app to connect with people you already know with practically no limitations on texting.
However, what happens when you want to chat with someone new, that you’ve never met before or you want to put yourself out there for people to contact you for a chat? What are the best ways to use Kik in this way?
It’s simple, update, search, and view Kik profiles to make the entire app more fun and allow you to meet new people along with show your old and new friends a bit more about yourself. Similar to Facebook or LinkedIn, your profile is one of the first things people see and gives a glimpse into who you are and what you’re like in person.
If, in fact, you haven’t used Kik previously, or someone texted you to “Kik me” and you’re confused, let’s talk a bit more about the app. I’ll walk you through some of the features and what makes it a great way to connect with anyone, anywhere in the world.
What is Kik?
You may have heard of Kik Messenger, and if you have a smartphone like an iPhone or Android device you will likely have heard of iMessage, WhatsApp, WeChat, Line, etc. All of these apps in their most basic form do similar things. They all allow you to message anyone using their service through your local internet connection. For instance, you can send a text message to your friend on the other side of the world over the local WiFi or cellular network and not have to pay for long distance text messages. Presently, there is no desktop version of Kik (it’s mobile only), but we do have a workaround for getting it on your computer, if that’s what you’d prefer.
One of the key features that differentiates Kik from it’s competitors is that the app is the only of it’s kind that also has a built in full browser that will let you search the web. This is key because if you’re chatting with a friend and something interesting comes up, you can look it up right there in the app without having to minimize it and look in another web browser.
Another feature that’s different about Kik is that instead of using your mobile phone number you can choose a username associated with your account. This is helpful because you don’t have to give out your phone number and you can create your own username and profile without sharing your true identity. This helps with security and privacy issues of some other messaging services.
What Are Kik Profiles?
Kik profiles are simple bits of information about your account that can help people find out if they know you from before or get a good idea of what you look like. Your profile consists of:
- Your Kik username which you choose when you sign up for Kik.
- Display name, which you can change and you can choose to display your full name or a nickname or only a partial name.
- Your profile picture, which you can upload from your previous pictures on your phone or you can take a new one.
Note, people won’t be able to see the email address you used to sign up for Kik with, and of course they can’t see your password to login to the app.
Below, I’ll walk you through some tips to edit your profile, search for your friends profile on Kik and how to view anyone’s profile.
How To View My Kik Profile
You can view your own profile quickly and easily. Make sure you update your profile when you first download and sign up for Kik so that people will know it’s a real account and not just a fake shell account. Simply open the Kik app and from there you will want to tap on the gear icon, which will bring you to the settings page. On the same page you will see your profile, along with your profile picture and username. Another way to view your own profile is to tap your name when you’re in a chat.
How To View Other People’s Kik Profiles
Another trick is if you want to view someone else’s Kik profile. This can be helpful if you want to make sure the person is who they say they are. You can check out their picture to make sure it’s your friend or check to see what their username or display name is.
There are two main ways to view someone’s profile. The first is if you’re in a conversation with the person and want to get straight to the profile page. If that’s the case follow these steps:
- Open the Kik Messenger app
- Go to the conversation with the friend who you want to view their profile.
- Tap on the picture next to their name and this will bring you to the page.
If you don’t already have a conversation with the person going you can follow these steps:
- Open Kik on your iPhone or Android device.
- Tap the chat icon, which is a little text bubble.
- Now you will need to know the person’s username. Type their username into the search box.
- When the person shows up in the search, tap their picture to see their profile.
Edit Your Kik Profile Display Name
When you sign up for Kik, you need to choose a username that is associated with your account. After initially signing up you can’t change your username unless you want to delete and sign up for a new account. However, you can change your “display name” which is what people see as your real name. However, for instance, you may not want to have your display name the same as your real name if you don’t want people to be able to find you outside of the app.
You can change your display name to anything you want. I would suggest not using your actual name if you are meeting people that you’ve never met in person on Kik. It’s safer to guard your privacy and make sure if someone is sketchy that you are protecting yourself.
To change your profile display name follow these steps:
- Open Kik Messenger app and you will see all of your conversations on the screen.
- Tap the gear icon at the top left on the iPhone. If you’re on another device, the settings gear icon may be in a different location.
- Tap Your Account, which will bring you to a page with your Kik username, email, the option to change your password and your name.
- Tap on your name and you will be able to change your first and last name.
How To Change Kik Profile Picture
You can change your profile picture on Kik to either be an image of yourself or just a random image. If you’re underage you may not want to include an image of yourself, you could use an image of your favorite sports team or musician. If you want to meet people, however, it is a good idea to add a picture of yourself so people can see what you look like.
To change your Kik profile picture you follow similar steps as above.
- Open Kik Messenger on your smartphone.
- Tap the gear icon or if you have a conversation open you can tap yourself in the text to see your profile picture (but you can’t change it in that screen).
- Now you will see your profile picture. You can tap it to blow it up and get a full sized image of your profile pic. However, if you tap the “set photo” button you can choose to take a picture right now or to use an existing picture from before.
Make sure the image is large enough to cover the bubble that you get for your picture. Also, if you’re in a group photo make sure your face is large enough to see when you upload it, as it makes the photo smaller and could be hard to see your face.
With recent updates to the app, it super easy to share your Kik profile on a number of social media platforms. You can share it on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, as well as email or text your profile. This makes it much easier to share your username with people you’ve just met and ask them to Kik you.
To share your profile you can simply follow these steps:
- Open Kik Messenger and you will see all of your ongoing conversations.
- Tap on the chat icon, the little bubble at the top right.
- Now you will see “Your Profile” just below the search box. Tap it and you will see a dialogue box pop up with the option to share your profile through a number of social media platforms.
Make sure you’re careful with sharing your Kik username on other social media platforms, sometimes it’s better to keep them separate if you don’t want annoying friends messaging you on Kik all the time. Or if there is an ex that you don’t want them to find your username.
How To Delete Your Kik Profile
Every once in a while you want to create a clean break and completely remove yourself from something. I’ve known a lot of people that either get tired or fed up with a certain app and decide that they’d be better not using it anymore. If that’s something you’ve decided with Kik, I can show you how to definitively delete your Kik profile so that no one can find you anymore.
Keep in mind that if you do delete your profile it cannot be undone, so make sure you’ve thought about it. Think of a week from now, month, etc. and whether you would want to use the same profile down the road. If you do, then best to just logout and from there you can always access your account and profile again.
You may ask what is the difference between logout and delete of Kik profile. Kik doesn’t let you logout as many apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram do. If you logout of your Kik account you basically are deleting all of your previous messages including the pictures and videos. The only thing that will remain is your profile that you can access again. If you delete your profile then all of your messages along with your account is deleted and there will be no records of them left on the Kik servers.
So to delete your Kik profile, follow these steps. Make sure you have access to the email address you used to sign up for Kik with because you will need to login to finalize the deactivation.
- First, head over to the Kik Messenger app and tap on the settings icon.
- Find your account and tap on it to pull up further options.
- Select the “Reset Kik Messenger” button
- You will need to enter in your email address that you used to register for Kik on the deactivation site.
- Find the email that Kik sends to you and click on the deactivation link to finalize the process.
TIP: If you’ve already deleted the app but just want to make sure your profile is deleted you can head over to the Kik deactivation portal where all you have to do is enter in your personal email address you used to sign up for Kik with and from there you can delete the account. Hopefully in the future Kik will allow you to simply logout of your account instead of going through the hassle above but until then we just need to make due.
That wraps up our review of Kik profiles, we hope it has answered a lot of your questions and given you some background information on how to edit, search, share your profile and more. Let us know your experience with your Kik profile. Has it caused you to meet anyone new or is there a trick or tip that we didn’t cover above? Apps are always coming out with secret features that they may not tell anyone about but people come across on their own. If you have found any Kik secret tips let us know so the rest of the users can enjoy them too.
