KickApps v3.3 & the Launch of App Studio

We released v3.3 of the KickApps Platform this morning with some very exciting new features. You can get the details on KickDeveloper.

A big part of this release is the launch of the KickApps App Studio, formerly known as the Widget Studio. The original Widget Studio launched in January 2008 and changed the way people create custom widgets and players (video, photos and audio). Using Adobe’s Flex technology, we make it extremely easy for anyone to create widgets and players with a Photoshop-like, drag-and-drop interface.

Since its launch, we’ve continued to add functionality, including 3rd party web services like video ad networks (we integrated Google Video Adsense, Scanscout, Real Media 24/7 and Doublelick DART). With this release we’re now offering 3rd party applications–starting with Meebo and Yahoo! Maps.

Our goal is to be the complete solution for web publishers to create, deploy and manage every aspect of their website. The  App Studio takes us a step closer to that and here’s what it means:

Developers: KickApps is now a distribution platform for application developers to distribute their applications to thousands of top-tier web publishers. KickApps and the App Studio now effectively becomes a new marketplace for creating and distributing applications. Developers now have access to over 50k web publishers, including some of the largest in the world, e.g. National Geographic, Guinness World Records and San Francisco 49ers.

Web Publishers: This moves us closer to being that single solution for creating and making applications from the global web application development community available to web publishers that are looking to build the next generation website and applications. Similar to the way Facebook Platform connects developers with consumers, the App Studio connects developers with web publishers.

We’ll be making our plug in APIs for the App Studio available generally in early Q2.

Starting 2009 Right — Meeting with Gartner

Welcome to 2009!

KickBlog has been on a short holiday hiatus over the last few weeks but we’re back and ready to GO! We’ve got a ton planned for the year that we’re very excited to share here and on KickDeveloper, and as always, I’m sure there’ll be a ton that’s unplanned.

To kick things off, we met with Anthony Bradley, managing vice president, and Nikos Drakos, research director, at Gartner this week. Alex and I had a very interesting (to say the least) conversation with them about the social software industry, our vision and offering, the market and their view of where it is today and where it’s headed. One conversation point that I found interesting was around the way the ‘enterprise’ (loosely defined as B2B—partnerships, customer support, internal, etc.) is beginning to see real value in using social media for customer relationships and marketing. Here’s Anthony’s initial takeaway from our chat.