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Five Questions with…QikCom
By Mark Evans | October 9, 2008
It wasn’t that long ago that micro-blogging within companies didn’t exist. Today, there are a growing number of players looking to become the Twitter of the Enterprise. The list includes Yammer, Present.ly and a new entrant, QikCom.
QikCom aims to be more than a micro-blogging platform by providing users with a wide variety of add-on applications. Right now, its TabStore features three tools: Competition (a way to track competitors), a To-Do list, and frequent numbers for loyalty programs. The company will open its API for developers to create more applications.
To learn more about QikCom, I threw five questions at founder and CEO Travis VanderZanden:
Q: Who’s behind QikCom and what was the reason/motivation to start the company?
We’re a small group of guys from the Austin tech scene passionate about making great products. In early 2008, we started to realize that the enterprise market could use a secure micro-messaging service, but we didn’t want to stop there so we also conceptualized what is now our TabStore, a marketplace filled with many other great business apps/tabs. Soon after, we quit our day jobs and made QikCom a reality.
Our goal is to dramatically improve enterprise productivity by providing the best business applications in the cloud, starting with the lowest layer (messaging) and then building up an ecosystem of rich business applications that can easily be installed from the TabStore.
Q: Micro-blogging has become a fast-growing communications tool. Why hasn’t it become a corporate staple yet?
Traditionally, IT departments have been hesitant to use cloud applications. I see that trend changing in the next few years and “cloudsourcing” will become more popular, especially if IT budgets decrease.
Q: There’s a growing number of players going after the corporate micro-blogging market such as Yammer and Present.ly? Why shouldn’t you be worried that Twitter is going to turn its attention to the market?
Twitter has been a great success in the personal space, and now it seems they are focusing heavily on International growth and monetizing their existing user base. While they may enter the enterprise space in the long-term, I don’t see an immediate threat from them in the short-term.
Q: Is QikCom looking to differentiate with the TabStore? How do you see it evolving?
Yes, the TabStore is how we’re different from our competition. We plan to give away micro-messaging and admin features for FREE and only charge customers for additional business apps in the TabStore. We see the TabStore evolving into a marketplace for many different types of cool business apps. We built and pre-installed a few examples including ToDo List Management and Competition Monitoring just to give our early customers an idea of what’s possible with the TabStore moving forward.
Q: What’s the business model?
- Free for employees to use
- Free for admins to secure and claim the network
- Additional subscription-based business apps/tabs available via the TabStore
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