5M users in 4 months. How hike plans to win the global messaging space

And all this with spamming!<p>No offence with them but I've been spammed like anything by them. It has happened with lot of my friends. When they install app, it sends texts to ALL contacts without permission prompting to install the app!<p>And this has been #1 reason I did not install it.

Curious about this line from the article: "128bit encryption over Wi-Fi." Why only when using wifi? I'm not aware of too much bandwidth overhead involved in exchanging public keys and using AES in some kind of stream-emulation block mode.<p>My cynical side worries this is some kind of concession to the wireless carriers that want to easedrop on traffic easily. I hope that's not the case! Anyone know?

Business model: cover the cost (a loss) of sending SMS, and sell advertising once it is big enough.