[Tehnix]

The "Kiked" should probably be read as "Kik'ed" and in any regards, "Kikked" would be wrong. Kik is an entity and not a word in itself here. Try replacing it with "IBM'ed", "Microsoft'ed", "Facebook'ed" etc. The last one is the closest one, you wouldn't be saying "Facebookked".

As a side-note, I in no way think the author made any association with the word kike. Even though I know the word, I didn't jump to that conclusion at least, especially given the context.

[gyardley]

The entity has nothing to do with it. Back when I worked for the comparison shopping NexTag, for example, people would certainly joke about being 'nextagged', not 'nextaged', which would've been read as something completely different.

None of IBM, Microsoft, or Facebook end in exactly one 'short' vowel plus one consonant, which is the rule, in English, that determines when the final consonant is doubled. That's why your examples don't work.

[jessaustin]

Other languages might have special rules regarding proper nouns and their use as verbs, but English doesn't. Basically, we follow the normal rules for words, except in cases where that would cause a problem. In this case, following the normal rules prevents a problem.

Incidentally, I would suggest "Microsoftened", since "soften" is already a verb that everyone is comfortable using. "Facebooked", of course, was a normal word in common use before anyone ever heard of Zuckerberg. Two vowels followed by a consonant is simply a different situation than one vowel followed by a consonant.

[phamilton]

Also, booked is the correct past tense anyway, so Facebookked is a bad example.