We’ve talked about keyboards plenty in the past and one that always comes up in discussion is SwiftKey. Their popular keyboard for Android has multiple impressive features like their predictive text engine and more. Today we had a chance to sit down and talk with Joe Braidwood, CMO of SwiftKey about the product, their vision, and why the VIP Forum Community is so important to them.

SwiftKey is something we’ve covered extensively here at AC, and you can read more about their impressive new SwiftKey 3 beta in our initial hands-on. Their current offering SwiftKey X is great, but the new version 3 makes it even better with a refreshed and impressive new UI, better predictive text, and the Smart Space is awesome and a selling point for me in itself. Here at CTIA along with the CMO of SwiftKey we also had a few minutes to talk to Evan Tapper, the community manager over at the VIP forums. He’s been the one reading all your comments (giving back the comma button) and adding all the changes that the VIP beta members have requested.

SwiftKey has a strong beta and VIP following with well over 60,000 members, and your valuable feedback has helped SwiftKey grow into the third iteration we see today, and one of Google Play’s editor picks for best apps. The newest beta released last week introduced tons of user feedback improvements, tweaks, and changes — and they promise us they’ll continue to add as much as possible from the feedback they’ve received.

The new smart punctuation button next to the spacebar for example, is an awesome way to quickly toggle different punctuation as needed but many are complaining about needing to long press for the options. If you have the new SwiftKey 3 beta you’ll be glad to know that just sliding your finger will enable the smart punctuation feature for your selection. SwiftKey also plans to add a quick gesture left or right to pick the most often selected punctuation based on the user in a future release.

All these awesome features, new features in development and more are all what make SwiftKey X and the new SwiftKey 3 one of the best and most popular 3rd party keyboards available for Android phones and tablets. With tons of money from investors, a community of over 60,000 users, and a dedicated team that is working to make the best product possible for their users.

We can expect to see SwiftKey 3 for phones and tablets leave beta and arrive in the Google Play Store soon. IF you’d rather not wait feel free to hit the VIP forum link above and sign up for your own free copy of the keyboard, and enjoy the VIP community yourself.