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.