ARTICLES

Social networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo, and Facebook are growing at breakneck speeds. Clearly, these are not isolated phenomenon but an overall trend that highlights people’s readiness to connect with other like-minded individuals, especially when they are surrounded by powerful, easy to use Web applications that will help them to do so. In a recent study, Forrester found that 19% of adults belong to a social networking site, and that 41% of the youth surveyed visit such a site at least once a day.

This trend not only reflects activity on popular social networking sites but also what’s driving user engagement on Web sites in general, as consumers begin to expect a more interactive experience on sites that they visit on a regular basis. For example, VIBE magazine recently launched VIBE Verses, an online community in which participants can upload videos of themselves rapping, and enter contests to win cash prizes. Over 80,000 members have joined the community, uploading more than a thousand videos that have been viewed millions of times.

Increasingly, today’s Internet users are also mobile users, expecting mobile counterparts of their favorite online services and destinations. In the same Forrester study mentioned above, Forrester said that “Almost every one of our interviewees mentioned ‘mobile’ when we asked what interactive marketing would look like in 2012.” Companies have much to gain in providing social-networking capabilities with mobile functionality, but many companies lack the infrastructure to offer such capabilities. Recently, VeriSign and KickApps teamed up to provide this missing link.

Building Online Communities 
KickApps provides a white label, hosted platform that allows companies to quickly and easily deploy social media functionality directly on their Web sites, including social networking, user-generated content, programmable video players, and widgets for content syndication. KickApps has proven expertise in building applications such as profile pages that members can update with comments, photos, and blog posts; voting; and widgets that can be passed from member to member, bringing traffic back to the main site. KickApps also provides copy to drive interest and engagement, and ensures that all KickApps-powered pages and functionality seamlessly match the look-and-feel of the site. In fact, it was the KickApps platform that powered the highly successful VIBE Verses community mentioned above.

Staying Connected on the Go 
VeriSign is the trusted provider of Internet infrastructure services for the digital world, offering services that not only secure the Internet and make it more reliable, but also help media companies to quickly launch and monetize integrated media campaigns across cell phones, PCs, and TVs. In combination with KickApps’s expertise in social media applications, such capabilities allow organizations to quickly deploy online communities with compelling mobile functionality. 

Two key components of the VeriSign infrastructure help make this possible: The VeriSign^® Intelligent Content Delivery Network (CDN) and the VeriSign^® Mobile Content Delivery Network. The VeriSign Intelligent CDN, which received Streaming Media magazine’s 2007 Readers’ Choice Award for Top Content Management Platform, provides high quality video in a highly scalable and cost-effective delivery model. The VeriSign Mobile Content Delivery Network connects over 500 of the world’s leading wireless service providers across the world to deliver content and messages to wireless phones, pagers, WAP phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), Research In Motion^® pagers, instant messaging, and email applications.

Tightly integrated with compelling, accessible Web applications from KickApps, VeriSign’s Internet infrastructure can help a growing number of organizations to form long-lasting ties with their increasingly social, increasingly mobile customers.

For more information about VeriSign’s solutions for social media, please visit the Media and Entertainment Solutions section of the VeriSign Web site, or call a VeriSign representative at 650-426-5310.