Posts Tagged ‘RockYou’

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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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.

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!

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.

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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