Kik is growing rapidly among the highly competitive players of instant messaging services and announced its first 100 million users milestone in just three years.

Kik is a cross-platform instant messaging service, which works almost similar to BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), using phone's data or Wi-Fi to send and receive photos and messages. It does not use the user's phone number to connect with other users but like in BBM and iPhone's iMessage, it uses a unique identification username. The app suits people who like to keep their conversations limited to their choice of friends. Kik's latest announcement shows its popularity.

Launched in 2010, Kik has reached the 100 million mark. The number has tripled since last year, up from 30 million users in 2012. The app has a huge fan-base in the U.S. with more than 50 percent of Kik's user-base within the country. Its download base is higher in the United Sates than Whatsapp, one of the leading instant messaging services, according to an app analytics company, Distimo.

Kik says it is gaining more interest and acceptance among several users. More than 200,000 users sign up for the service each day, company's CEO Ted Livingston told CNET in an interview.

Kik messenger uses a unique HTML5-powered "Cards" feature that lets users play games, doodle, share music and location through Foursquare. Kik Card games are setting up a new trend, like the four-week old "Costume Party" has already reached 1 million users in 22 hours and more than 4 million gamers play the game within the app. With the Cards feature, Kik lets users play games without leaving its app.

Kik directly competes with messaging apps like Line and KakaoTalk, but stands out due to its Cards system.

"The big thing about Tango and Line and all these guys ... it's not a platform, it's an ad network," Livingston told Venture Beat. "At the end of the day, they're showing a list of apps you should install. We saw the same thing. But in terms of actually making the messaging experience better, it doesn't do that."

If you are willing to give Kik a try, then it can be downloaded for free on Android, iOS, Windows Phone and unofficially on BlackBerry.