Alex Blum, CEO, KickApps

On February 1st, Alex Blum--whose resume includes stints as president and COO of multicultural broadband TV service, JumpTV; as head of product marketing for AOL's Audience business; and as general manager of AOLTV--became CEO of KickApps, a company which provides a hosted platform that is intended to enable Web site owners to easily deploy premium broadband video, user-generated content services, and social networking functionality. The company claims that its white-label solution is currently powering around 2,700 Web sites for a diverse line-up of customers that includes ABC and the producers of "Lost"; Procter & Gamble; and Twisted Sister frontman, Dee Snyder.

Blum recently spoke to [itvt]'s Tracy Swedlow about the company's service and its "open portal" philosophy; about its pay-for-performance business model; about its plans to extend its service; and more.

[itvt]: How long has KickApps been around?

Blum: KickApps has actually been around for about two years, but until recently it's been flying under the radar. It was founded by Eric Alterman, and it's one of many ideas that Eric has developed over the years. He's a serial entrepreneur. When he originally started developing the concept on which KickApps is based, he called it KnowItAllVideo. He actually self-funded the development of the KnowItAllVideo site four-and-a-half years ago, and the site has pretty much stayed as he originally conceived it. If you go to it, you'll see that it's similar to YouTube, but it was originally developed years before anyone had heard of YouTube. He wasn't able to really focus on the concept at the time, because he was in the middle of building the MeshNetworks business, which he ultimately sold to Motorola in 2005.

But, once he closed that deal, he was able to focus on KickApps. He received A-round financing from Spark Capital and Prism. And then he and the team quietly built out this platform over the last two years. It's a user-generated video/video-sharing platform, but it goes well beyond just allowing end-users to upload and share video.

[itvt]: So how is it differentiated?

Blum: The short explanation is that it's YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, WidgetBox, and Brightcove in-a-box. It's a platform that enables an existing Web destination to evolve into what we refer to as an "open portal," and thus that stimulates rapid audience growth. What we mean by an "open portal" is that instead of programming your destination yourself and driving an audience to view your destination through the traditional means of natural search and paid search--which, of course, is a world controlled by Google--you now get the audience to participate, and to bring their content with them. So it's their passions; it's their friends; it's their music; it's their pictures; it's their video that they bring with them in a collaborative effort.

In other words, what KickApps is all about is enabling existing Web destinations--existing brands, existing portals--to have these kinds of social-media, interactive, user-generated capabilities. We provide a white-label solution for all kinds of Web sites--ranging from small sites, operated by individual consumers who, through a one-click process, can transform their site into their own open portal, all the way up to major media that are looking to transform their existing online presence into a more evolved experience that exemplifies this open portal concept.

[itvt]: So it's an ASP service, correct?

Blum: That's right. It's a hosted platform that includes such elements as premium video, user-generated video, audio, and pictures, and all the things you associate with social-networking services--things like profiles and blogs and peer-to-peer chat sessions. If you don't require a lot of customization, it can be up-and-running within minutes. Or, by using our Web services, you can build out a complete custom experience on your own.

Basically, we offer three distinct products or levels of customization. With our most basic level of customization, a consumer could come to our Web site, KickApps.com, and literally set up an entire site, with all the capabilities I just described, with a couple of clicks and without any knowledge of HTML, Flash, or anything else like that. With our mid-range level of customization, you would have your Web-savvy publisher or Web developer come to our site, where they would be able to access a toolset that contains very easy-to-use tools and templates, and use those tools to build out more custom versions of the premium video/user-generated content/social networking experiences we enable, and also provide content syndication through widgets that are also easy to create. Then, with our highest level of customization, we enable developers to access our platform's entire suite of business components through a library of open API's. We encourage this type of customization on top of our platform, and feel that it should be limited only by the creativity of the site designer and the expertise of the Web developer.

[itvt]: Do you provide users of your service with tracking capabilities?

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Blum: Yes. All of our affiliates have access to a standard set of reports and some ad hoc reporting capability, which allows them to effectively manage and grow their audience. What's also very important with this platform is that we've built out a toolset that not only allows you to create and author your experiences, but also to manage them over time.

A lot of people looking to enable social media haven't really thought through the issues of operating these types of sites over time. We've created tools for media management and for member management that allow a very small editorial staff--or even individuals--to operate KickApps-enabled sites, and to seed those sites' communities over a long period of time with content experiences that fuel rapid audience growth. For example, we have tools that make it very easy for a small editorial staff to moderate and approve a large volume of user-generated content prior to it being promoted to the live site. With these tools, objectionable content can be filtered from users' experience without a huge investment from the publisher.

[itvt]: Now, all the content on your customers' KickApps-powered sites is loaded onto, managed and tracked on your company's servers…

Blum: Yes. That's our model. One of our core beliefs is that we need to eliminate as many barriers to entry as possible. In order to do that, we feel we need to provide a series of hosted Web services. The hosted Web service model is where the industry is heading, and we're supportive of that, as it helps eliminate barriers to entry for a very large addressable market looking to introduce social media experiences to existing sites.

[itvt]: What are the components of your package? Can customers deploy them individually?

Blum: We have four elements which we refer to as building blocks for social media. These four big chunks of functionality include a complete set of user-generated content experiences, social networking, a premium player widget for professionally produced video, and syndication through widgets. These key building blocks sit on top of a common platform that makes it easy to set up a custom site and operate the site over time. So we offer an integrated modular experience, whose components can be deployed separately. In some instances, our clients tell us that they just want to start off with a single building block, such as user-generated video. So, if they want to take baby-steps, rather than launching a complete social media site all at once, we enable them to do that. But they'll take those baby-steps knowing that, when they want to expand the experiences they offer or their audience begins to demand this of them, they'll be able to do that very easily on our platform. They'll be able to do it in an integrated way, without having to replace an existing point solution. So, to summarize, we offer an integrated approach, but you can start off slowly and deploy elements of our solution on an a la carte basis, if that's what you want.

[itvt]: What's the business model for your service?

Blum: The primary business model is pay-for-performance. That's actually one of our core beliefs: that access to our technology and to our Web services should be free. If, by utilizing our technology and services, you succeed in growing your audience and your advertising impressions, we simply look to participate in that incremental growth--in order to cover our costs associated with hosting the environment and with the development of our intellectual property, and of course in order to make a reasonable profit on top of all that.

Our relationships with our affiliates usually see us delivering ad impressions from a variety of ad networks. We look to optimize the value of the inventory by combining what we learn about end-users across all sites within our network and the context of the individual Web page, to deliver the most relevant ads--thus yielding a premium effective CPM.

That's the basic model. However, there are certain affiliates who either choose not to enable advertising on their site or have their own internal ad sales organization to sell all incremental inventory. In this case, they pay us what is, in essence, a license fee, calculated on a usage basis equaling the effective CPM rate we would have otherwise generated. We can track very accurately when you're delivering calls to our service to create page impressions, or to upload video or to play video, and--if that's the model you want to follow--you'll pay us for that usage, and you'll pay us at a rate that will be a fraction of the extent to which you're monetizing your site.

[itvt]: What kinds of people and companies are using your service?

Blum: Users of our service are pretty varied. They include individuals who are supporting a Little League baseball team; local broadcasters; tier-3 or tier-4 Web sites that are looking to remain relevant, and that need a solution to easily implement video and social networking capabilities; and major media companies that are looking to extend their brand online in this way. Actually, we are spending a lot of time, in our direct sales activities, talking to major media.

Another area where our service is making inroads is advertising. Large advertisers and advertising agencies are spending a lot of time with us, because they're interested in building micro-communities around brands and ad campaigns. They see our solution as a great way to facilitate that, because it makes it so easy to set up these micro-communities. Because we have this hosted model, we make it very easy for them to do this kind of thing, and the cost associated with it is a fraction of what they would be spending through traditional means to reach a similarly sized audience.

[itvt]: Let's talk more specifically about some of your customers and how they're using your services.

Blum: Yes, there's some really interesting stuff that's happening. A really neat example of the use of our platform is Procter & Gamble. They recently created a campaign around their TAG Body Spray product line. They created this whole micro-community around the product and around a "lifestyle" associated with the product. This was a tremendous success, reaching a very large audience in a very short period of time.

There's also ABC and the producers of "Lost," who hired UGO to create a fan site with the KickApps platform. The site provides greater insight into the production of the show with interviews of the producers and writers, along with providing a forum for fans to share views and passions about the show.

And it's not just major consumer brands or major media that have been leveraging the KickApps platform: one of the best examples is what was accomplished by a single staff member at a local Cleveland television broadcaster who created, with very little resources, a popular local Cleveland destination at My43.net.

Also, even though I don't consider myself a headbanger, one of my favorite sites is the one Dee Snyder of Twisted Sister recently launched, called Houseofhaironline.com. It's a really fun example of how rich experiences can be created very easily on top of KickApps.

[itvt]: How are you marketing your services?

Blum: There has been no real marketing to date and most awareness has come from word-of-mouth through the blogosphere. But, with almost no marketing at all, our tools have already been used to create over 2,700 sites. Actually, later this quarter--in the May/June timeframe--we're going to get very serious about our marketing efforts. This will be around the time that we launch the next generation of the KickApps platform, which we intend to promote very heavily.

[itvt]: Could you talk about your next-generation platform? What kinds of improvements will it offer over the current implementation of the platform?

Blum: I'm not looking to reveal too much at this time, but you can expect us continue to build out our already-broad set of social-media building blocks, to continue to add tools to make it even easier to implement and customize the platform, and also to continue to build capabilities to further optimize the value of the incremental ad inventory generated through the implementation of KickApps.

[itvt]: Do you see yourselves as competing against companies like Brightcove?

Blum: We're not necessarily looking to compete directly against Brightcove. They have a whole concept around an open marketplace for video and syndicating your video. We're not about that. However, with the latest generation of our platform--the one we launched in March--we've developed a premium player that allows Web publishers, that have professionally produced content, to put a great, rich-featured video experience on their site, complete with media management.

It was easy for us to extend our platform in that direction, so we went ahead and did it. We were aware that a lot of publishers, that started out offering broadband video, soon decided that they also needed to offer user-generated experiences and social networking experiences. So it was an obvious move for us to provide this premium video capability, so that we can serve as a one-stop shop that allows companies to create integrated premium video/user-generated content/social networking experiences. We knew that these players that have focused on premium video--like Brightcove and Maven--are often being asked by their clients to do something around social networking and user-generated video. And I think it was much easier for us to add premium video capability to our platform than it would be for them to try to get into our space, because building a complete social media solution with all the tools for easy implantation and management is a massive endeavor. We definitely didn't start off thinking in terms of competing with them. We just built this capability because a lot of our clients were asking for it--and, of course, asking for it to be implemented in a way that was tightly integrated with our other services. A lot of companies--both media companies and other types of companies--are looking for an elegant way to commingle professional-quality video with user-generated content. We provide a quick and easy way for them to do that.

[itvt]: In the sites that are being powered by your tools, how do you find the premium video content relates to the user-generated video?

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Blum: The relationship between the two is actually what our premium player is all about. A lot of our partners are looking for elegant ways of having these two types of video content coexist in a new type of online experience. That was a major thrust for us to develop the premium video player with a common media-management backend. The common backend stores metadata on all assets ingested by the publisher and all assets submitted by users in one place and in one format--which makes it very easy for sites to create a single playlist that has professionally produced video commingled with the user-generated stuff.

Here are a couple of examples: a soccer site might want to have something on Mia Hamm, and have video from a Mia Hamm game--but also, right next to that, have video from a young girls' soccer league. Or a baseball site might want to have professional video of Barry Bonds hitting a home run, right next to some young kid hitting a home run in the Little League. Or a basketball site might want to have professional video of an NBA player making a half-court shot, next to a series of user-submitted videos of high school basketball players making similar half-court shots.

These types of experiences, where you'd be combining these two different types of content into one really great, compelling experience, are what we're focused on.

[itvt]: Do you have any plans to offer mash-up capabilities as part of your service?

Blum: We have no plans to venture into the online video-editing space. We're not going to compete with EyeSpot and other companies that are really focused on online editing tools. It doesn't make sense for us to get into that space, when there are businesses that are entirely focused on that kind of thing, and when it's very easy to leverage existing technologies to create mash-ups, as opposed to having to build out those capabilities ourselves.

[itvt]: I understand that you have some high-profile media figures on your board, correct?

Blum: Yes. There's Jarl Mohn, who's also an investor in the company. He's the past CEO of Liberty Digital, current chairman of CNET, past general manager of MTV networks, and co-founder and past CEO of the E! Entertainment channel. There's also Sara Levinson, who is past president of Rodale Publishing and NFL Properties, and was also at MTV. So we've got a tremendous board that deepens our understanding of the needs of traditional media organizations.

[itvt]: Have they been able to help you land any deals with media companies?

Blum: Both Jarl and Sara have tremendous networks of friends and past co-workers in high places within major media enterprises, and they've been tremendous ambassadors for the company.

[itvt]: What kinds of news should we expect to hear from KickApps in the coming months?

Blum: As I mentioned, in the May/June timeframe, we'll be releasing another major upgrade of our service, along with a complete redesign of our site. That's when we plan to have a serious coming-out party and when we plan to invest in a major marketing push. Now, when I say "invest," I'm referring to investing our time and effort, more than money. We plan to market our solutions primarily through online methods, including becoming more of a part of the conversation that's going on in the blogosphere. So we're starting to do a lot of outreach: Eric continues to engage actively with like-minded people in the   blogging world who share his views about the importance of the open portal--about the importance of opening up your platform technologically and also opening it up economically, by having pay-per-performance models that make it possible for people and companies with very limited resources to use it. Our philosophy is that broadband video and social networking shouldn't be the exclusive domain of big and powerful portals or media brands. We're happy to support these large players, of course, but we're also interested in supporting the smaller players--even individuals--who want to create these kinds of video-rich interactive experiences, as the smaller players are often the ones who stimulate creativity and development in this area.

[itvt]: Do you have any plans to extend your service to the mobile platform?

Blum: It's absolutely on our roadmap not only to have our solution extend out to the mobile platform, but to ensure that it's possible to upload mobile video and other mobile content to a KickApps-enabled site. That's something we hope to implement soon.

[itvt]: You joined KickApps fairly recently, correct?

Blum: Yes. Though I actually joined KickApps' board in 2005, roughly at the same time that I became president and COO of JumpTV, which, as you know, is a multicultural IPTV network. I left JumpTV last December to become the CEO of KickApps, and I officially started here on February 1st.

[itvt]: And prior to working at JumpTV you were at AOL, where you were, among other things, involved in one of the earlier interactive TV projects, the AOLTV box, correct?

Blum: Yes. At the time of AOL's acquisition of Time Warner, I was asked by Barry Schuler to be general manager of the AOLTV effort. Back then, AOLTV--like the merger--was being held up as a poster child for the convergence between old and new media. I think the demise of AOLTV was largely the result of internal corporate politics. AOL had a strategy in place that called for us to acquire TiVo: we'd made a $200 million investment in them, to lock them up, and we actually had an acquisition deal done with Mike Ramsay and the TiVo board. This investment in TiVo and most of the negotiations over the acquisition of TiVo had occurred prior to the acquisition of Time Warner. So, the strategy was to build this combo box, that would combine AOLTV and the TiVo service, and then initially have AOL--as a neutral party--distribute it through both cable and satellite, and thus have a large national footprint for this combined service. The box was designed by the TiVo guys: they had a version for satellite that would work both on DirecTV and DISH Network, and a version that would work in cable, but we were never able to launch this combo box.

[itvt]: While at AOL, you were also involved in a number of other projects that are pertinent to what you're doing at KickApps, correct?

Blum: The job I had for the last three years I was at AOL was head of product marketing for the audience business. That's the free-to-consumer, ad-supported offering that's emerged over the last year as really the only remaining meaningful business at AOL. In that role, I was involved in the relaunch of the AOL.com portal, and with a variety of other products. There were roughly 70 Web-oriented products that our team was responsible for, including AIM. But the two areas we were most focused on were the video product line, which included video search, the AOL video player, and LightningCast, the streaming-video advertising network that was subsequently acquired by Advertising.com; and social networking and community.

So, when I left AOL in 2005, I already had a fair amount of experience with the kinds of experiences that KickApps enables, and I knew how important implementing a service like ours would be for publishers of all forms who were looking for rapid audience growth.

URL: KickApps

Originally Published: April 27, 2007 in [itvt] Issue 7.29

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