Wire is the result of reimagining how a communications tool such as Skype should actually work if it had been built today. For its part, the new messaging app worked on delivering a more solid infrastructure while keeping the design simple and uncluttered.
Wire is a Swiss startup that is being touted as a 'modern communications network.' It is backed by Janus Friis who co-founded Skype in 2003. Apart from Friis, the startup is composed of notable hires among its 50 team members with a location background that spans across 23 countries.
Jonathan Christensen, Wire's co-founder and CEO, used to work at Skype (2006-2012). He also bought and co-founded the startup Camino Networks. Alan Duric, Wire's co-founder and CTO, helped in building Camino Networks and Telio. Priidu Zilmer, Wire's product design chief, was also the head of the design teams at Skype and Vdio.
Based on these impressive professional records, the company is proud to say that it is made up of 'product and technology leaders' who came from big names in the technology world such as Microsoft, Nokia, Apple, and Skype.
Apart from messaging, Wire also features picture sharing, voice calling, and media sharing such as videos and music. The company made sure that each of these features delivers what they describe as 'high fidelity paired with elegant design.'
"This is not just attacking one feature trying to do something marginally better," said Friis. "What the team has done is a complete from-the-ground-up reimagination of what communication should be. I wouldn't have been interested if this was just another feature."
The conversations done around Wire can either be one-to-one or group chats. Within a conversation, users can drag photos, display YouTube videos and play SoundCloud tracks. A user keeps a social graph where his list of contacts is sorted out using a number of signals such as frequency of chat exchanges and the timing.
Wire uses the Opus open source audio codec which is developed in part by Koen Vos, the company's chief scientist. The result is having a clear and loud audio quality when doing voice calls.
"We have deep expertise in audio technology: we've made many refinements to the audio stack. It's one of our core things," said Christensen.
Another big feature is Wire's design. Its user interface allows various functions such as sending a 'ping' to contacts to get their attention and muting a conversation when it has become too distracting. In the mobile version, users can swipe aside the text-input cursor in order to view action icons.
Wire also takes care of the users' privacy. The app uses end-to-end encryption on all its voice calls, messages and media.
Wire is free to download on iOS, OS X and Android. It will be rolled out on a slow and invite-only scheme as it prepares for a global launching once it feels that users begin to pile up in the platform.
