KickApps Announces Partnership with VeriSign and One-Click Mobile Upload

NY-based white-label social networking tool provider KickApps is announcing two major items today: collaboration with Verisign and a one-click mobile upload to their customer's networks. I spoke with Alex Blum, KickApps CEO about the announcements.

Also check out my behind-the-scenes time with KickApps and interview with marketing VP Michael Chin.

Verisign Collaboration

Alex noted that Verisign is very aggressive and have tremendous capability with their CDM play. Many of Verisign's clients were looking to wrap their video networks with a social network and that's where KickApps came into the deal. Verisign's customers who take KickApps network platform have the same revenue options as other KickApps customers. That is selecting the KickApps ad network and share in the revenue or "buyout" the inventory and serve their own advertising. Alex said that most of the new sites are using the buyout option which makes sense for larger networks.

Mobile Phone Upload

The mobile phone upload option allows any of the KickApps social networks members to upload video from their mobile phone with one click. Basically, you shoot a picture or video and attach it to an email and send it to KickApps for processing. He said this is the easiest way possible to get user-generated content into a network via a mobile device. He noted that it's important that the social network admins let their members know that while KickApps does not charge any fees for using this service, there might be data charges from the mobile provider.

Alex said that this new feature has significantly simplified the end user process but it was very hard on the back-end because of the multiple handsets and networks. The hope is that this mobile option creates a "deeper level of engagement".

The upload process works as follows:

• User enables profile to accept mobile uploads
• KickApps generates a unique email address
• User enters the email address into their mobile device
• User can add comments in the body of the email and attaches the picture or video to the email
• The file is then added to the appropriate social network

Lastly, Alex said that they are working on adding also offer a webcam option as well for use on the desktop/laptop.