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January 17, 2008

KickApps Publishes API Kit, Adopts Facebook and OpenSocial Platform Standards

Mark Hendrickson

12 comments »

KickApps, provider of “white label” social networking functionality for existing websites, has been making strides to open up its hosted platform to both web and application developers.

Webmasters who want to integrate KickApps’ social networking features - such as user profiles, videos, photos, and blogs - typically use the company’s Affiliate Center, an online control panel with which you can modify the way those features look and function. For power users, KickApps provides an API that gives webmasters more direct access to KickApps-hosted data so they can build more highly customized websites. Today they’ve published a KickApps API Developer Kit intended to help its customers take fuller advantage of that API by introducing them to its capabilities and inviting them to initiate custom development projects, which require close collaboration with the KickApps team.

More notably, KickApps has adopted Google’s OpenSocial developer platform standards and is working with Facebook to adopt that company’s standards as well. Just over a month ago, Bebo announced a developer platform that was essentially a clone of Facebook’s own platform. Bebo’s intention was to attract developers who had already designed their applications for Facebook and who would prefer not to rebuild them under a different platform standard. In the hours following Bebo’s announcement, Facebook made it clear that it encouraged the adoption of its platform standards by other social networks. KickApps appears to be the first white label social networking provider to get on board with this, and the second company after Bebo to declare its support for both OpenSocial and Facebook standards at the same time.

As for its OpenSocial support, KickApps says that it’s ready now for developers who want to build OpenSocial applications for KickApps-enabled websites. No applications have been developed yet, however, apparently because developers are not quite ready to take advantage of the standard.

KickApps will be releasing its latest version in a couple of weeks; we’ll return at that point to review its newest features. Our latest broad assessment of KickApps can be found in a round-up of white label social networking platforms we published this past summer.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 17th, 2008 at 11:04 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. Anonymous

    March 7th, 2008 at 6:08 pm

  2. White Label Social Networks that support OpenSocial (For 2008)

    March 15th, 2008 at 11:43 am

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  1. BinaryDay

    January 17th, 2008 at 11:26 am

    “No applications have been developed yet, however, apparently because developers are not quite ready to take advantage of the standard.”

    The last time I checked OpenSocial was working on the sandbox of orkut alone. Has it become operation for common users? Till that happens I do not see any point in developing applications on the standard.

    Anyways there seems to be a clear trend towards integration of all social networks. Hopefully it will make life easier. :)

  2. Travature

    January 17th, 2008 at 1:17 pm

    This is continued good news for Kickapps and for those of us who chose to use Kickapps over Ning as the platform for our community features. Glad to see they continue to work towards being as flexible as possible for those of us who are doing development around their system. As it stands right now, to customize Kickapps highly, you still have to hack a lot of it, and being able to build our own open social apps around KickApps will certainly help us out.

  3. BinaryDay

    January 17th, 2008 at 1:23 pm

    @Mark and @Travature

    You seem to have missed the fact that the api is available for paid users alone.

    “Because the Dev Kit APIs bypass our hosted pages and advertising, they’re only available when you participate in our paid ad buyout plan”

    I do not like them.

  4. techcrunch, stop with snap

    January 17th, 2008 at 1:39 pm

    i hate how everytime i accidentally move my mouse over a link with that little snap image it pops up. it makes my browser lag. no one wants to see a little snapshot like on a blog posting.

    the only reason i can see that you guys do that is because you have a deal with snapshots.

  5. Travature

    January 17th, 2008 at 2:14 pm

    BinaryDary,
    That part is actually unclear. If you read their latest API document, it really doesn’t say anything at all about Open Social. We have an email in with them right now to find out more specifics, but essentially it could go either way. It depends on how they want to use open social, because if they want to have an application directory ala Facebook, I’d be surprised if they are going to charge developers for it. We’ve already developed a Facebook app, and we’ll probably throw a an Open Social app together for Kickapps, as long as they dont charge for it, and I’m sure most would be in the same boat.

  6. Josh

    January 18th, 2008 at 1:54 am

    These guys are going nowhere fast. Check out their traffic on alexa or compete. Their pageviews are shrinking; I predict they’ll be swimming in the deadpool in 9 months.

  7. Michael Chin

    January 18th, 2008 at 8:11 am

    Michael from KickApps here. Thanks for everyone’s interest.

    Travature: Really happy you’re liking what you’re seeing from us. You’ll be hearing back from the team re: your email if you haven’t already.

    BinaryDay: To clarify, using the KickApps APIs does have a cost associated to it. Through our APIs we’re providing direct access to all of the business components that power our platform. Similar to our hosted applications, the cost is structured on a usage based rate. This means that you only pay a fee for what you use, in this case, the number of API calls. The KickApps Developers Kit comes with sample code in PHP, Java and .Net, making it extremely easy for anyone with those skills to create pretty much any type of “community” experience imaginable, and they can monetize those experiences however they want. Contact us here if you want more info on the KickApps Developers Kit: http://kickdeveloper.com/api/.

    Our support for 3rd party application developers who want to extend the functionality of the KickApps platform (via the OpenSocial and Facebook Platform) does not cost anything. This simply means that apps developed to those standards will work on the KickApps Platform (i.e. we’re a container) should the publisher choose to enable it. Anyone who develops an application to either of these standards can submit it to be included in our “plug-ins” directory. Furthermore, any revenue that is generated within those applications belongs 100% to the application developer, just like on Facebook. More information on how to participate is coming shortly and will be posted on our developers web site at http://www.kickdeveloper.com.

    Opening up the KickApps Platform is an important step to increasing the flexibility of our white-label Platform for publishers and developers.

    Josh: You’ve brought up a MAJOR differentiator between KickApps and some other ‘white-label’ solutions on the market. We attribute ALL traffic to site owners. What you’re looking at is the traffic to our corporate website.

    The attribution to customers’ sites is KEY as a white-label solution. Our customers use our applications to create social media experiences for their websites. Our SaaS model means that we developer, host, manage and deliver these experiences on their behalf and have created a platform that is very flexible and customizable. However, everything about their KickApps powered experiences is theirs: traffic, members, media, data, etc.

    As far as OUR numbers go, maybe I should speak to the KickApps marketing guy about what’s going on there. Oh wait… :)

    Peace,
    Michael Chin
    SVP, Marketing
    KickApps

  8. Kin Lane

    January 18th, 2008 at 11:30 am

    This should definitely put KickApss ahead of the curve with Facebook Integration and embracing OpenSocial. This is the missing link.

    Ning is pretty close behind, minus the private labelling….

  9. Bali

    January 18th, 2008 at 2:03 pm

    KickApps, provider of “white label” social networking functionality for existing websites, has been making strides to open up its hosted platform to both web and application developers. Webmasters who want to integrate KickApps’ social networking features - such as user profiles, videos, photos, and blogs - typically use the company’s Affiliate Center, an online control [

  10. Crowd Factory

    January 18th, 2008 at 3:43 pm

    As business grows increasingly dependent on the web, APIs are critical to developing the the most compelling, engaging consumer experience. Deep customization is a must for full control over the way your application looks and feels. Crowd Factory offers the richest, most flexible, ad-free platform for developing social media sites. Check out: http://www.marthastewart.com/yourplace

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