Interactive, Engaging, Shareable

Social Media Software is the name given to the type of online content management systems that allow users to interact with the website, to engage others in various types of online communication and to share information in many digital formats -- from text and photos to audio and video media.

While there are many software platforms that allow someone to create a blog, a chat-room, a message forum, photo gallery, and other systems for building a website where multiple users contribute and interact with the information, there are now several Swiss Army Knife application suites that tie all the user management and content management features together under a single unified interface.

The deciding factor for many organizations and the website developers who have to build the sites and the webmasters who will manage them is whether the software is a hosted solution, (also called "SaaS" or "Software as a Serivce"), and software which can be downloaded or purchased in box and installed on your own web server. Some solutions are available in both SaaS and DIY, ("Do It Yourself" - install and manage), varieties.

Typically, SaaS applications are faster and easier to set up, but are usually limited in how much customization can be done. On the other hand, install-it-yourself type software may be more difficult to install and configure, but since most web based software is written in a server-side scripting language such as Php, Perl, ASP or other, the customer is free to modify and customize the software to their liking.

The field for Social Media CMS packages has really opened up lately, and no single article could review and compare all available platforms, features, options and pricing models. For more info, read the individual reviews in our Social Media section and check out some of the available solutions they link to.

KickApps - "white label" social medial software.

The hosted KickApps platform allows developers to create online communities from scratch or integrate social media functionality into existing CMS based sites.

Kickapps is marketed with two pricing models; FREE, and a CPM, (cost per thousand), pageview based pricing structure. Under the free pricing model, Kickapps displays advertising on the communities web pages, but provides a navigation column skyscraper ad space where the community's developer can run Google Adsense or other advertising.

Kickapps prvodes software to easily setup a Web 2.0 community with video, photo, and audio media file sharing.

Community members can interact with the community in a variety of ways including uploading of video and photo media from mobile devices. Each member gets a personal profile pages, (with it's own unique URL), which ties together their media uploads, blogs, forum messages and other aspects of their involvement in the community.

Kickapps is used on many national and international sites to either provide social networking functionality, or is used to create the entire site. Some of the sites include the Guinness' Book of World Records, the Rachel Ray Show, the San Francisco 49-ers Fan Site and National Public Radio (NPR) "Get My Vote" site. The following screen shots are actual KickApps websites, (click links below each one to visit the site).

KickApps powers the Rachek Ray Incredible People social networking site features.

www.rachaelrayshow.com

KickApps powers the Sand Francisco 49ers Faithful Fan Site

www.49ersfaithful.net

KickApps powers National Public Radio (NPR) GetMyVote Political site.

www.npr.org/getmyvote

Setting up a KickApps community was straightforward, fast and took under 5 minutes. You simply create an account, name your community, pick a theme, and go! The online setup tool gives you a temporary URL and a link to the site administration tools as soon as you're done. In less than 2 minutes you receive an email from KickApps with the permanent URL for the site, ("www.kickapps.com/example" if you named your community "example"). The email contains tips and links to help you get your site going.

In addition to the default URL, Kickapps allows you to use your own domain name and will do DNS masking so the site appears as your own. White label refers to the fact that you can re-brand the software as you like and do not have to have advertise that the site is a KickApps community.

I launched the "Affiliate Center", (which is what they call the site's back end management area). and with very little effort quickly customized the default template I had chosen.

I'd recommend KickApps for any organization looking for a hosted solution, although if you are running a commercial website and plan to monetize it with advertising revenue, you may want to look around a bit more as KickApps takes the prime advertising spots on your the site for their own PPC ads. I have not contacted them (yet) regarding the CPM paid pricing model. This story will be updated as ned information is available.

NOTE: Be sure to checkout our Social Media Software Roundup page for details and to compare KickApps to other Web 2.0 application suites.