Applications
KickApps launches online video generated user solution
MUMBAI: KickApps has released a hosted community solution that invites any website to quickly and easily deploy user-generated video and social networking functionality directly on their Web pages.
KickApps says that it provides a highly customised, enterprise-quality platform intended to serve all websites, including major media brands like reality television shows, cable channels, talk shows, magazines, newspapers, and sports teams.
KickApps addresses the needs of webmasters looking to provide their visitors with all the functionality typically found at leading Web 2.0 portals like MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and Facebook. It also provides webmasters with a set of sophisticated media management, reporting and administrative tools designed to protect websites from pornography, copyrighted material and user content that may hurt their brands or offend advertisers.
KickApps founder and CEO Eric Alterman says, “By powering brands with community-building functionality at many diverse websites we are helping those brands aggregate audiences within specific contexts. We believe context is the next major driver for Web 2.0 traffic and for advertisers looking for a safe, effective way to promote their brands to identifiable communities with known demographics.”
KickApps provides webmasters with a suite of technologies that deploy instantly with a cut-and-paste “widget” implementation. Visitors to websites powered by KickApps can upload videos, photos and audio files, create their own personal pages, invite friends, and create instant video blogs. Webmasters are empowered with a sophisticated Affiliate Center environment that allows them to quickly create a highly customized user experience complete with a robust set of media management tools.
Spark Capital co-founder Santo Politi says, “High-traffic media and content websites need competitive user-generated content and social networking functionality. But they also require the kind of administrative tools necessary to protect their brand. KickApps is well ahead of the market in providing webmasters with the features and controls required to deploy an effective community platform.”
KickApps says that it fully embraces the concept of widgets in the form of Flash-based objects that contain video and other media aggregated by affiliate websites. Visitors to websites powered by KickApps can ‘steal‘ these widgets and place them on their own social networking personal pages.
Widgets can contain both user-generated video and premium video uploaded by affiliate webmasters, and all widgets link back to affiliate websites in a highly viral fashion.
Alterman adds, “While KickApps enables the usual features found on most user-generated content websites our widget-based platform is designed to create a far more dynamic and viral media experience. Our affiliates will have thousands of content widgets positioned all over the Internet, all linking back to their websites. Widgets take content syndication to a whole new level.
The company will announce a number of customer deployments over the coming weeks.
Applications
Canva acquires animation and AI startups Cavalry and MangoAI
The deals strengthen Canva’s push into enterprise and AI-led design workflows
AUSTRALIA: Global visual communication platform Canva has stepped up its acquisition drive, buying UK-based 2D animation platform Cavalry and US-based AI startup MangoAI to deepen its AI-powered creative stack.
Cavalry, whose tools are used by brands including Amazon, Meta, Google and Netflix, will strengthen Canva’s motion design capabilities. The deal builds on Canva’s 2024 acquisition of Affinity, which has crossed four million downloads since launch. With Cavalry, Canva now counts seven Europe-based acquisitions, underscoring its global expansion strategy.
MangoAI, an early-stage startup focused on video advertising optimisation, will integrate its reinforcement learning systems into Canva AI. The move aims to enable brands to generate personalised marketing content in real time, cutting production cycles while improving campaign performance. MangoAI co-founder Vinith Misra will join Canva as reinforcement learning lead in its research lab.
Canva co-founder and chief operating officer Cliff Obrecht said the acquisitions reflect the company’s ambition to make professional-grade creative tools more accessible without sidelining human creativity. The goal, he said, is to bring everything from vector to motion design into a single, integrated suite.
The company now reports 265 million active users, including 31 million paid subscribers, and $4 billion in annualised revenue, up 36 per cent year on year. The latest buys further position Canva against rivals such as Adobe and Apple’s Creator Studio as it pushes deeper into enterprise workflows.
Canva head of pro design marketing Liam Fisher, said AI is intended to act as a creative assistant rather than a replacement, reinforcing the primacy of craft and individual design judgement.
