*But It Might Be Soon.

KickApps is an 80-person social-networking startup with its head office in a loftlike space just off Fifth Avenue in New York. In less than two years it has created the underlying structure for more than 20,000 social-networking sites--"mini-Facebooks" with an aggregate of 300 million page views per month. You've probably never heard of it.

KickApps gets a fraction of the press coverage of a giant like Facebook, but its growth has been sufficiently impressive that venture firms like Spark Capital and Prism VentureWorks have backed it with $18 million in startup financing, hoping for the payoff of a monster IPO. Its software allows companies to quickly roll out social networks with many of the features of Facebook or MySpace. Its clients--which include local radio stations and newspapers, national networks like NPR and ABC, and brands like AutoByTel, Harley-Davidson, and Kraft--want to offer fans a place to gather and share their love of a team, a product, or anything else.