How LiveProfile Netted a Million Users in Five Days

Cross-platform messaging app LiveProfile recently shot to the top of the App Store charts, adding 1 million users in just five days, doubling its total user pool and taking down its servers. So how did an app that's been around since October for Android (GOOG), and since January for iPhone (AAPL), suddenly achieve such massive success?

The answer might surprise you, especially if you're following the falling star of RIM (RIMM), at least as it's generally depicted in the press. The surge in users is because LiveProfile just introduced a BlackBerry version of its messaging client on Mar. 25. The client offers instant messaging with status updates, message delivery confirmation, and photo/video messaging. LiveProfile's chief executive, Phil Karl, said in an e-mail interview that he thinks LiveProfile's success has a lot to do with the product's advantages over SMS and its "unique feature set and beautiful interface," along with the fact that LiveProfile "is much more than just a messenger," with planned additions to social network features in the pipeline. But Karl also acknowledges that the recent addition of BlackBerry no doubt prompted "rapid growth on all platforms." BlackBerry and Android are currently the fastest-growing platforms for LiveProfile, though the iPhone is "not far behind."

Kik was the last service to offer BBM-style messaging across Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry devices, until RIM pulled the app and began legal proceedings against the company. Kik, too, experienced massive early success before it first ran afoul of users with a spam e-mail campaign, and then the BlackBerry client was pulled, after which it fell out of the App Store rankings. Karl is confident his app won't suffer the same fate. He believes RIM's primary reason for going after Kik was the possibility that a former RIM employee, now Kik's chief executive, brought over and used trade secrets at his new company.

Karl also maintains that LiveProfile is a different type of product. Clearly, though, LiveProfile hopes to capitalize on its similarity to BBM, or it wouldn't have used a typeface for its logo that looks remarkably similar to the one used for BlackBerry's branding. It even provides a PIN number that allows others to add you to their networks.
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