KickApps Bucks Economic Trends in First Half of 2009

Adds global brands, expands innovative social media solution and collaborates with Adobe on the Open Source Media Framework

NEW YORK, July 30, 2009–KickApps (http://www.kickapps.com), the industry’s first complete Social Media publishing solution, today announced that the company exceeded its aggressive goals and expectations for all business metrics during the first half of 2009. During this period, KickApps saw more than a doubling in recurring revenues from its hosted services (hosted page views, widget renders, video plays and API calls) as compared to the same period in 2008. Additionally, the company added over 25,000 new clients during this period, nearly 40 percent of which are non-U.S. based organizations, including some of the world’s most recognizable brands in media, entertainment, the Fortune 500, and small business.

New clients during this period include, the Scripps Networks’ Food2 (www.food2.com), a league-wide implementation at the National Hockey League (www.nhl.com ), Ziff Davis’ PC Magazine (www.pcmag.com), Shape Magazine (www.shape.com), Turner Classic Movies (www.tcm.com), The Special Olympics (www.specialolympics.org), Muscular Dystrophy Association (www.mymda.mda.org), Buffalo News (www.buffalonews.com), IMG (www.imgacademies.com), Simon & Schuster’s Pulse It (http://pulseit.simonandschuster.com/) and AVP’s Volleyball Nation (http://www.avp.com/Volleyball-Nation/Volleyball-Nation.aspx).

Consistent with KickApps’ belief that robust social media solutions shouldn’t be solely for major media, entertainment, and Fortune 500, KickApps launched new offerings tailored specifically for the needs of small businesses. Small businesses are rapidly adopting the KickApps platform to help transform their operations to benefit from the social web. The new offerings put complete control of the entire KickApps social media solution in the hands of any small business, independent web publisher and agency, and nonprofit organization.

“The demand for our products and services has never been stronger and we’ve seen an accelerated adoption from businesses of all sizes that are looking to KickApps to achieve deeper levels of engagement with, and insight into, their audience, customers and partners,” said Alex Blum, CEO, KickApps. “In a very short period of time, we’ve evolved this industry from where social media was a mere bolt-on to an existing web site experience to it being baseline functionality and one of the most effective and efficient ways in which to grow audience, and develop new revenue streams and online marketing channels.  Customers are increasingly using KickApps as the 100 percent solution for their web site, helping to define the next generation Web Publishing Experience as Social, Interactive, Data Informed and Distributed.”

Additionally, KickApps received a very high ranking in GigaOM Pro’s report on Social Media in the Enterprise (http://pro.gigaom.com/2009/05/social-media-in-the-enterprise/), noting that KickApps is one of the top Social Software companies with strategic potential for the Enterprise.

During the first half of the year, the company released hundreds of new features that enable deeper levels of engagement on websites leveraging the KickApps Platform. A major initiative included KickApps’ collaboration with Adobe on the Open Source Media Framework initiative, a new open framework for building custom media players and an industry standard for media players. Integrated into the KickApps App Studio (the first truly drag-and-drop flash widget and video player authoring tool) for creating widgets and media players, the Framework enables the company to more quickly and easily integrate new production-ready components and significantly reduce time to market for clients.

Entering the second half of 2009, KickApps will continue to expand its solutions for web publishers, media and entertainment companies, Fortune 500 brands and small businesses. A particular focus is providing the enterprise and corporate markets with solutions for customer engagement and insights, brand and product marketing, customer support and product research and development.

About KickApps

Selected by BusinessWeek readers as Best of the Web 2008, KickApps provides brands, enterprises and web publishers with solutions that enable social, interactive, dynamic, distributed and data-informed web experiences. KickApps solutions consist of a suite of hosted social and media applications and services that are used by some of the world’s largest websites and brands to grow & engage their online audiences and foster deeper relationships with customers. Clients include: Budget Travel, CW Television, Guinness World Records, Special Olympics, HBO, Cinemax, Cox Television, the Phoenix Suns, the New York Knicks, the New York Rangers and thousands of other sites. For more information, visit www.kickapps.com and www.kickdeveloper.com.