2008 in a nutshell.. prediction for 2009 [kwiqq]

Posted on | January 5, 2009 | View Comments

When I think of 2008 it has been a fantastic learning experience. And realisation of a lot of hard work we put in over the last two years. This was a turning point in my entrepreneurial carrier, in words of one of the Kwiqq’s advisers “This is the year when you (Kwiqq) understood your (its) business model”. Means a lot to come from someone who has been advisor to several start-ups.

I wrote a similar blog last year and it is perhaps best to see how we performed against our targets:

This we did a fair amount of business in the US and some in Europe. All our focus was on building sites which are more usable at the same time cost effective for our partners and clients. A lot of effort has gone into building reusable library of code in Zend Framework which makes it a win win situation for our clients and us. We expanded our team this year too and most of it was focused on developing sites focused on usability, privacy features, using API’s of major social networks.

2008 in a nutshell

So 2008 was the year where Kwiqq seriously worked on a stringent procedure to deliver quality products for our clients. We not only attended several conferences but spoke at several events at TFM&A, LSE, Merrill Lynch, British Library and several others. There was a major shift in the way we work where our ambition is to innovate as oppose to simply follow the trend. We also adopted several trends like OpenId, Facebook Connect, Open Social etc.

Rewards and Awards

One way to assess the progress is by seeing what people are saying about Kwiqq. This year we were one of the 20 top UK start-ups to be selected for Web Mission ’08, sponsored by HSBC and UK Trade and Industry. We were also selected for CaliforniaTech Showcase as one of the selected British companies by ‘Invest in Western France’. Obviously fantastic networking opportunities !

Team

We rapidly expanded in 2008, we are now three times our original size (see BusinessWeek article) more importantly we are moving from followers to trend setters. The expansion not only gives us more hands on deck but allows us to showcase expertise in various areas like usability, design, development (bespoke and using APIs). See Kwiqq’s team on LinkedIn

Websites

This year we tried to diversify the sites we undertook. We also shifted from Symfony to Zend Framework. Apart from the end user, there are complex backends which we provided to monitor and edit the websites we build, very interesting area for us be in.

Challenges and predictions for 2009

1). Grow, grow..: Given the economic unrest Kwiqq will continue growing. That is in terms of the team, projects we undertake and technology. So we might become one of the few web companies in the UK hiring (if you are a recruitment agency please visit our recruitment page for instructions)
2). Social Solutions: Reinvest in technology and delivering more social products for users to adopt.
3). Client Social Products: Continue focusing on delivering new social products. Some projects we worked on were full on social networking products. There is nothing more exciting for the Kwiqq team than delivering one of those. GazetMe is one of the products launching early 2009.
4). Eyeing the APIs: 2009 will be the year for using as many social APIs as possible, mainly this would allow clients to get to more users with least marketing investment. Things like Facebook connect, Open Social etc will be one of the most talked about tools in the social software market. We will be delivering more of those this year. Also given that these technologies are raw and fresh in the market there will be ample scope for innovation
5). Twitter Products: This is the year when clients would ask for Twitter as a feature, it would be as common as say blogs on sites. Just to clarify there are over 185.6 million blogs worldwide I feel twitter will get a share of that blog market with products like Twitblogs.com and plugins for wordpress which convert your tweet into blogs

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