EVENT: Streaming Media East 2008

If you’re planning to attend Straming Media East this week in NYC, be sure to drop by and check out Alex’s panel tomorrow (May 20) at 11:45 AM: Monetizing and Aggregating Niche Video Content

This panel will discuss the new ways content owners and site developers are aggregating content and distributing it on Web 2.0. See examples of ways to develop niche vertical sites without having to hire tons of new personnel and discuss how to reach audiences on social networking sites like Facebook and others. Learn about some of the new emerging platforms for niche video distribution and learn best practices for increasing your chances of making money with your content.
Moderator: Jamison Tilsner, Founder/Blogger, Tilzy.TV
Presenters:
Jim Louderback, CEO, Revision3
Alex Blum, CEO, KickApps
Herb Scannell, CEO, Co-Founder, Next New Networks

UPDATE: Here’s a video of the panel.

Data Portability: Facebook, Google and MySpace

By now we’ve all read the recent data portability announcements by Google (Friend Connect), MySpace (Data Availability) and Facebook (Facebook Connect) to extend social functionality outside of their walls to any website.

Since these announcements were made I’ve been asked for my opinion about what it means to web publishers, the market and KickApps. I believe all three will be useful but the key point if you’re a publisher is to what degree do YOU want and need to own YOUR site’s audience’s’profile data and activities data. This will dictate how you use or don’t use any of the three.

At the highest level, core to every publisher is its brand, editorial content/voice and relationship with its audience. As the web becomes more social, access by the publisher to their audience’s Profile and Social Graph (audience data and activities) becomes extremely important. Having this information becomes a powerful tool that delivers deep insight into their audience, which informs editorial programming and marketing. Crucially, it plays a huge role in delivering truly targeted advertising.

While Google, MySpace and Facebook’s initiatives allow publishers to import more data from the big social networks into their own users’ experiences which will help to seed a new niche community, the CORE piece that is missing is that they don’t empower publishers to aggregate their own membership and fully access their member’s Social Graph.

To achieve this, publishers will want control of their own community profile management, reporting and social graph engine—the heart of what KickApps provides. It’s also important to publishers that core applications (UGC, social networking, widgets, programmable video players, media management, member management), along with 3rd party apps (OpenSocial and Facebook), are also fully integrated with their members’ social graph and member data out of the box.

Net-net, I believe the data portability initiatives are a good thing for the industry. KickApps will integrate with MySpace Data Availability, Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect such that our publishers can quickly accelerate growth of their own audience by tapping into the “friends” their members already have on the big social networks. In that respect KickApps is not only the foundation of your social graph engine but is a serious accelerator for publishers looking to get the benefits of any “openness” provided by the big social networks while retaining ownership and control of their own audience and social graph data.

As always, the devil is in the details and we’ll all have a front row seat as it develops.

I’m sure the discussion around this will continue in the weeks and months to come. So far, Mike Gunderloy of Web Worker Daily’s post, “Google Friend Connect: What’s the Point?” resonates most with me as he examines this from a web publisher’s point of view. Charlene Li’s blogs about Facebook Connect and Google’s Friend Connect are also a good read, as is Stacey Higginbotham’s post on GigaOM, “Prying Open the Social Graph.”

UPDATE: Eric, KickApps’ founder’s take on this can be found here. Also, Marshall Kirkpatrick has great analysis of this as usual.

KickApps Spring Update

Spring can mean different things to different people. At KickApps it means a number of things, including lots of conferences and trade shows. Before we get to that though, here’s something that you might find interesting. Rachel Happe, Research Manager, Digital Business Economy, at IDC, released a report on the state and potential of the enterprise social networking market. In her report, U.S. Social Networking Application 2008–2012 Forecast: Enterprise Social Networking Takes Hold, Happe notes a number of things that really stand out.

Last year, she projected growth in our market to come in at around 120 percent. In her research she found that actual growth in 2007 came to approximately 191 percent. For obvious reasons this isn’t a surprise to us. We’ve seen a huge lift in market traction not only for KickApps but for social media applications of all sorts. What’s remarkable is how much the industry is evolving in a very short period of time. Some of what we’re seeing from our publishing partners and agencies is showing that many really ‘get it’ and are pushing the envelope around social media, the KickApps Platform, design, programming and execution.

While 2007 exceeded Rachel’s projections, my guess is that 2008 is going see an even steeper curve in adoption. At the end of last year, KickApps was powering just under 10,000 sites. At the end of April this year, that number is just over 21,000 sites. That’s about 110% growth in 4 months! In addition, activity levels are very impressive. For example, this forum on Bonnaroo has over 740 discussions and over 4,600 replies. More than just numbers though, we’re extremely proud of the brands that have chosen to partner with us (check out a partial list here). Not bad for a site that’s just a few months old.

We get very excited about all this but what really drives us is continuing to make the KickApps Platform even more robust. As usual, stay tuned to this blog for updates on the product front and highlights of cool client deployments that are in the pipeline (WINK, WINK).

As I mentioned earlier, we’ve been busy at various conferences and trade shows over the last few weeks. These are great opportunities to meet many of you in person and also to show others what’s possible with KickApps. Here’s a quick recap:

Digital Hollywood Spring: Joining me in Hollywood were Jeff Zaretsky, Matt Bijur and Stan Shaul. Matt was on a panel about the Social Media and User Generated Media Economy with executives from Metacafe, AOL, YouTube and Redpoint Ventures, and I was on a panel about the Technology Challenges of Social Networks and User Generated Media with executives from Turner Broadcasting, Cisco, imeem and MOG. In addition, check out Matt on Pixel Head Network’s EXPOzed from the show floor.

Clickability User Conference 2008: Our partner Clickability invited us to participate in their annual user conference. An extremely successful event by all accounts, David George spoke on the panel entitled, Everything You Want to Know about Social Media, but are Afraid to Ask.

Sports Marketing 2.0 Summit: The 2nd event put on by Pat Coyle of the Indianapolis Colts was held in San Francisco. David George spoke on a panel about social networking and spent the day hanging out at SF’s beautiful AT&T Park with attendees from teams and leagues (tough job…). Social media is doing great things for sports teams and leagues, check these sites out: Phoenix Suns’ Planet Orange, Seattle Seahawks’ Spirit of 12, and New York Rangers’ I Am a Ranger.

Finally, Eric was invited to present at Needham & Co’s Third Annual Internet & Digital Media Conference yesterday.

Check out Events page for information about where we’ll be in the coming months and make sure to drop by to say hello to the team.