RockYou Announces New $17 Million Round

This morning RockYou announced a new round of funding from Softbank and SK Telecom Ventures. Part of this new round of investment involves a joint venture between RockYou and Softbank which focuses on the distribution of mobile and social web applications in Asia. In other words, a significant portion of this round is going toward the large and fast-growing platforms in the east.

Last week I wrote about Chines Facebook-copycat, Xiaonei, launching a payment platform for applications. RockYou has already been taking advantage of the Xiaonei platform, as one of the few (if only) large widget or social web application companies to do so. With a total amount raised of $67 million, RockYou is preparing to open up three new offices despite the economic downturn.

The company has announced the opening of offices in New York, Los Angeles, and Detroit. Despite other companies announcing a lockdown on further hirings, the RockYou announcement suggests that the company is handling business as usual. The company will be leveraging some of their funding to acquire other applications as well.

It’s clear that later stage rounds are still taking place especially for companies like RockYou that have over 100 million monthly unique visitors. With advertising dollars slowing, it’s good timing for RockYou to put some more cash in the bank.

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