Qik Is Shutting Down, How To Save Your Videos

Founded in 2006, Qik enabled mobile phone users to share live video with their friends, family and followers. In January of 2011, the company was acquired by Skype. Three years after announcing the acquisition, the company has announced they will shutdown the service on April 30, 2014. The shut down means all mobile apps will cease to function and all of the hosted videos will no longer be available.

oEmbed Support For Qik Will Be Removed In WordPress 3.9

WordPress supports oEmbeds to make it easy to embed content from white listed services. For example, instead of using the embed code provided by YouTube, simply add the video URL into a post or page and WordPress will automatically turn it into embedded content. WordPress currently supports oEmbeds for Qik but they will be removed in WordPress 3.9.

Step One In Moving Qik Videos To YouTube

To save your videos, Qik recommends downloading them and either storing them on a local storage medium or on SkyDrive if you have a Microsoft account. Alternatively, you can use the YouTube feature to move videos to YouTube. Videos that are embedded into posts or pages will soon show a video currently not available error. In April, the embedded flash player and videos will be removed. Whether it’s a video URL or the embed code, both will need to be removed from posts to prevent passive errors from showing in browsers.

The Best Time To Own Your Content Is Now

According to Mashable, Qik’s userbase reached 5 million users in 2010. With that many users, it’s inevitable a lot of videos will be lost forever, never to be viewed again. This is the risk anyone takes when they host their content on a third-party site instead of owning it. This holds true no matter how large and or successful a service becomes.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t use YouTube or any other third-party service. They’re a great asset to the web and give people access to an incredibly large and diverse audience. My rule of thumb is to always have a backup copy of your original works and do not trust a third-party to have your best interests in mind.