KickApps on TechCrunch
KickApps: White Label Social Networking That Delivers
KickApps
has continued to grow in the face of strong competition from high profile startups such as Ning.
TechCrunch first covered KickApps in July 2006. I had the opportunity to speak with CEO Alex Blum this week. Blum was previously President and COO of JumpTV and before that Vice President of Product Marketing for AOL.
KickApps’ numbers aren’t as impressive as Nings. KickApps powers over 3000 social networking sites compared to Nings 67,000+, yet Blum believes that KickApp’s offering is a superior platform.
The overall KickApps experience is thorough. Nothing obvious is left out. White label sites have a full choice of 13 features; profiles, guest books, video and feeds are some of the options. The backend is simple to use and smart at the same time. The moderation of videos option doesn’t just present the uploaded video; numerous screenshots are automatically generated to immediately give a reviewer a good idea of what is contained in each video.
Widget/ embedding support is extensive and delivered complete with DNS masked domain; users never link to KickApps itself, the specific domain is always presented in the embedding code. It’s a small thing but one that defines KickApps in comparison to Ning.
KickApps also offers an open API and developer kit. Blum told me that whilst most sites simply use the features offered, a number of high level users have implemented the API on their sites, delivering a custom solution….