Clik to Video

Ted Livingston told Portfolio.com in October 2011 he wanted his venture-backed firm, Kik Interactive, to be a $1 billion company.

Today, the Canadian company—based in Waterloo, Ontario, and backed by such investors as New York’s Union Square Ventures—is taking another step in that direction by introducing an application that allows users to turn their smartphones into remote controls for nearby screens with browsers.

Called Clik, the application is being introduced in both the Android Market and Apple's App Store today and lets users tap into YouTube videos and stream that content from their phones to other screens with just the point of a smartphone. It isn’t entirely ready to allow users to stream the full panoply of video on the Web to devices other than their phones.

Ultimately, Livingston is looking for the application to work not just with YouTube video, but with any video content.

“Just download one free app and I have the smart TV of the future,” Livingston told Portfolio.com. “Clik is about empowering you to walk into any room and, boom, any content goes onto your screen.”

Fred Wilson of Union Square Venture Partners, the New York firm that has participated in $8 million in funding for Kik Interactive, said in a release, “The ability for highly personal mobile devices, like phones, to easily take control of computers, TVs, cars, and other expensive and complex devices is one of the most important mega-trends in technology right now. Clik's approach to this problem is novel and slick, bordering on magic. You have to see it to believe it. It's a game changer.”

Livingston told Portfolio.com he had founded the company in 2009 with the idea of just such an application as Clik.

But his company detoured along the way to develop the application that has been Kik Interactive’s mainstay, Kik Messenger, a free app allowing for Skype-like texting between users who have the service, which essentially eliminates the need to pay for texting plans from the phone companies.

That application is available across all smartphone platforms including that of Research In Motion’s BlackBerry. But it faces competition from instant messaging services ranging from Facebook and Skype to the telephone companies.

“We’re almost full circle here,” Livingston said.

Livingston said the Clik application being introduced today will be, like Kik Messenger, free for users.

He said his company plans to make money off the latest application by taking a cut when others sell content streamed through the app or by the sale of virtual goods in games people use the app to play.

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Kent Bernhard Jr. is News Editor of Portfolio.com