NYC Startup Updates: Outbrain, ZocDoc, Magnify.net, KickApps

Here’s the latest news from a variety of NY-based startups. If you are a NY-based startup and have news about your company, send it in.

KickApps

KickApps announced today that they have hired David Lapter as Chief Financial Officer and Tom Gaffney to head up the company’s expanding Customer Success division. Apparently the Customer Success division works on strategy and creative services.I’ve never heard of a Customer Success division but I like the idea! Check out all of our KickApps coverage.

Outbrain

Outbrain launched an update to their widget this week called the "Link Zapper". We run the Outbrain recommendations widget on CN (you can see it at the end of this post). The widget recommends other posts both from CN and from our whitelist of partner sites. The Link Zapper allows us to easily remove a link that might not be a good fit for the source story. It’s a very manual process and while I am hoping for some automated tools in the future, it’s a good start. Check out all of our Outbrain coverage.

ZocDoc

We’ve covered ZocDoc extensively on CN and I believe it could be the breakout star of 2009. ZocDoc provides online management for doctor, dentist and other healthcare practitioners. Forbes magazine named ZocDoc the winner of their small business contest. The announcement came this week and ZocDoc won $100,000 to further develop and expand their service.

Magnify.net

Earlier this week Magnify.net announced the launch of Thwoop.com, an online community for featured entertainment content and user-contributed videos. The concept for Thwoop.com came from children’s toy e-tailer Brand Performance and the site will be powered by Magnify.net. Check out all of our Magnify.net coverage.