KIKO belongs to TUCOWS!

 

Kiko the web 2.0 calendar was recently put on the auction block for US$50,000. If that wasn’t news enough, they actually managed to sell for quarter million dollars! What amazed and intrigued me was the fact that someone out there would want to invest this kind of money into an online app which competes with other FREE online apps floated by small co.s as well as the goliaths like Google. Who would be so bold??

I finally got my answer today…. Tucows.com.

Yes folks…. the shareware downloads portal. They even posted an explanation on their blog to explain WHY they went ahead and bought kiko. Read it here. Apparently, they needed a great web calendar app to work with their existing email platform. That’s the short answer. The longer version is online.

Now i’m asking myself a whole lot of questions…..

- Ok so they wanted an internal app and are not immediately interested in competing with other calendar offerings… but is a quarter of a million dollars “justifed” for spending on a web 2.0 calendar app?

- If they really want to use KIKO for their internal email needs, aren’t there other ‘established’ options out there?

- Did they analyse options like Scalix… or even Zimbra? (Personally, scalix is an awesome solution for small/medium/large co.s with multiple mail clients and devices)

- Is tucows being truthful about this whole “we needed the functionality” statement? Do they have a bigger game plan with KIKO like adding more modules, widgets and features and then releasing to the public? Frankly I’ve always felt that KIKO looked and behaved much better than Google calendar. Needless to say, I don’t care much for the UI of any of Google’s online offerings… be it writely, gmail or calendar.

Hopefully, tucows will release more information in the coming weeks……