RockYou - SocialTimes.com

4 Pre-IPO Companies with White-Hot Valuations According to SharesPost Activity

Tom Johansmeyer — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 10:30:08 +0000

Once upon a time, a moistened finger was raised into the air … and the result was private company valuation. Much has changed since then, of course, and the advent of private company trading environments –such as SecondMarket and SharesPost – makes it feel easier to pin a real number on companies that have yet to complete the IPO process.

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How To Make Money From Virtual Goods in Social Games: The Social Times Pro Report

wjamesau — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 09:58:23 +0000

News that Zynga is attempting to patent virtual currency, whatever you think of the idea, highlights a larger point: Virtual goods continue growing as a major revenue source for social game developers, and competition among them is getting fierce. I recently had a chance to chat with several leading executives from top social gaming companies for my first Social Times Pro report, “Virtual Goods in Social Games: What Sells Best, Who Buys Most, and How Your Company Can Profit“. While the opportunities are huge, the executives I interviewed also warn of some fairly unique challenges that come with the category: continued…

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RockYou Raises $10M in Funding From SoftBank in its 5th Round

Azam Khan — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 15:00:25 +0000

RockYou announced today a $10 million round of funding from Japanese technology giant Softbank and also purchased majority shares in its joint venture with SoftBank called RockYou Asia. RockYou plans on increasing its social gaming prowess in the Japanese, Korean and Chinese markets and is already live on Mixi in Japan, Xiaonei in China and Cyworld in Korea. Softbank is already a force in Japan with the country’s most popular search engine and e-commerce site. This move should help position Softbank to become a stronger competitor as it aims to solidify its presence in the social gaming markets. Read more after the jump.

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RockYou's My Casino Puts You In Charge Of All The Gambling Fun

Azam Khan — Thu, 20 May 2010 10:40:24 +0000

It seems like every possible empire building game that can be made is being made on Facebook, and RockYou’s My Casino is the latest in the trend. The game gives you the power to build your own casino from ground up – complete with slots, poker and craps. The game fits in nicely with RockYou’s current arsenal and is steadily growing from its current user base of 660K MAUs.

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Will Player Unions Drive Future Changes To Social Games?

nickoneill — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 10:27:50 +0000

With tens of millions of users playing many of the top social games, you would imagine that users would have a greater say in the future of the application. That’s exactly where the idea of player unions come in and Jason McDonald, an avid Zoo World player, appears to be the creator of the first social game players union. The “OFFICIAL Zoo World PLAYERS UNION” is an unofficial group according to RockYou, yet it appears true that Jason McDonald has been meeting with RockYou execs on behalf of players to negotiate changes.
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RockYou's Deal of the Day: High-Conversion CPE Ads for Social Games

rajdash — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:00:39 +0000

RockYou are today launching their “Deal of the Day” (DOTD) ad unit, which gives flash game developers the ability to offer and monetize deals on virtual goods and services. This offering is part of RockYou’s ad network, which reaches 280 million people across most of the major social networks. Lisa Marino, Chief Revenue Officer at RockYou, in an interview with SocialTimes, provided a bit of insight.
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3 Ways Developers Drive Users To Facebook Games

Neil Vidyarthi — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:25:55 +0000

Recently, we noticed that RockYou had been promoting it’s ZooWorld application by using graphic ads on the Meebo chat service. This is certainly another sign of the growth of Facebook games, not only in reach, but in value to advertisers, as they pay to make placements on disparate networks or in this case, chat aggregators. We investigate how other game companies are attracting users to their Facebook games from outside of Facebook.
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RockYou's Data Breach Takes A Turn For The Worse With Class Action Suit

nickoneill — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 22:56:42 +0000

RockYou has come under fire recently after a SQL injection flaw resulted in a data breach which exposed over 32 million RockYou user emails and passwords. Rather than immediately solving the problem however, RockYou was complacent. As Nik Cubrilovic pointed out, “They have not taken steps to rectify the problems that caused the breach and have not addressed their users in a suitable or adequate manner. An appropriate response would have been to take the site down for a period of a few hours and enforce that users enter new passwords, which would be stored in a hashed or encrypted form.” Two weeks later a class action has been filed.
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The Future Of Social Media Monetization, Part 1

nickoneill — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:38:36 +0000

Editor’s Note: This post was written by Ro Choy, Chief Revenue Officer of RockYou. In this series, Choy will address the future of social media monetization, focusing on the potential of platforms such as Facebook and the ability for third parties such as RockYou to create their own platforms and monetize a multi-faceted approach to social media marketing.

The Future of Social Media Monetization

Last year (even six months ago) most questioned whether social media could deliver meaningful business results. Whether it was the daily concern over Facebook’s revenue or the questioned utility of social applications, the general consensus was the entire social media industry was hard to monetize.

Today, the huge success of social games, the increasing number of brand marketers using social media and the myriad of business targets that social media leaders are pursuing (payments, e-commerce, search, etc.) are referenced daily. continued…

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hi5 Grows Games and Cash Flow with RockYou "Pets"

kristennicole — Wed, 13 May 2009 13:58:13 +0000

hi5 is expanding its gaming section with the addition of RockYou’s Pets game to all of its users. The RockYou Pet game has gained a steady following in its own right, so hi5 is seemingly looking to ramp up the offerings of its own game channel by layering in online activity that is sure to keep users around for extended periods of time, with game titles they already know and trust.

For RockYou, the new partnership means that hi5′s 63 million users will be able to access its gaming products. As one of the major application developers, RockYou has been among the first to create game apps for most of the major platforms, from Facebook to MySpace. So it’s no surprise to see RockYou reaching further with the new partnership with hi5.
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RockYou Adds Cross-Network Targeting to Ad Network

kristennicole — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 08:04:03 +0000

RockYou may be well known for its photo-sharing apps that have become rather popular on social networks like Facebook. But this company, which grew in fame thanks to its use of the widget prior to the days of integrated applications on networks’ platforms, has also been growing its own network approach, specifically in terms of advertising.

Today RockYou is announcing two new options for its ad network, including cross-platform video distribution, application integration and improved targeting of application ads within a given social network.
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RockYou Announces New $17 Million Round

nickoneill — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 08:59:31 +0000

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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Interview with Jia Shen, CTO of RockYou

nickoneill — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 06:49:26 +0000

Earlier today I had the opportunity to speak with Jia Shen, the CTO of RockYou about his thoughts on the new platform design and Facebook Connect. RockYou is well positioned to adapt to a changing platform given that they have operated in much more volatile environments in the past. RockYou was launched on MySpace before social platforms even exist, putting their company at the mercy of MySpace who would shut down their applications without notice or explanation.

While RockYou recently had one of their applications shut down on Facebook, they now operate in a much more stable environment driving over 1 billion impressions a month. Jia sounds prepared to adapt to the new platform changes and is actually excited about where the platform is going. I also briefly discussed RockYou’s expansion on to other platforms outside of the U.S. Jia said that they are currently on Xiaonei and things appear to be going well there.

I discussed much more with Jia so if you’d like to hear more about the future of RockYou and Jia’s thoughts on the Facebook platform announcements, listen to the podcast below!

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RockYou Raises $35 Million

nickoneill — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 08:05:40 +0000

The battle of master widgeteer continues with today’s announcement that RockYou has raised $35 million from DCM, the company which provided $1 million in interim funding. Apparently the interim funding was provided while the terms were being nailed down. Whatever the case, this is yet another massive round of funding for the widget market. Slide raised $50 million at a $500 million valuation and Clearspring recently raised $18 million at an unknown valuation.

Widgets are a clear part of the social web, providing content creators with a broad distribution channel for their original content. How broad of a distribution channel you ask? Well RockYou in particular reaches over 87.5 million people per month. The company has found a substantial amount of success on the Facebook platform and has continued that trend on to MySpace and hi5.

Not everything is rosy in the widget and social application world though. Just yesterday it was revealed that Slide, the largest developer of social applications, will stop releasing new Facebook applications. While the company didn’t provide complete details of their reasoning, one of the primary issues was that it has now become extremely difficult to launch new applications on Facebook with the increasing viral growth restrictions.

While RockYou and Slide generate the majority of their traffic from social networks, they are both generating traffic from their core sites as well. Clearspring, a leading widget distribution platform, is also generating a substantial amount of traffic from outside social networks given that their widget platform runs practically anywhere on the web.

It is still relatively early for these companies though but it is clear that investors are willing to take a gamble. Over $100 million has poured into social applications and widget platforms with the majority of funding going to the leaders. RockYou clearly needed to position themselves as a front-runner in this space and with their new round of funding they can continue their leadership position.

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Picture SlideShows for MySpace

marisdagis — Wed, 16 May 2007 15:06:55 +0000

No doubt that photo sharing is one of the most popular things between MySpace users. And if you are sharing your photos I’m pretty sure you have thought about how to create cool SlideShows from your photos. I listed here most popular tools which can help you to create picture slideshows for Myspace, Bebo, Friendster, Hi5, Xanga and other social networks.

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