VentureBeat

Japanese Americans explore the power of ethnic networks in Silicon Valley

Ethnic networking is big in Silicon Valley. Indian professionals have The Indus Entrepreneurs (TIE); and the Chinese and Taiwanese have their pick of the Hua Yuan Science and Technology Association (HYSTA), the Asian America Multi-Technology Association (AAMA) and the Monte Jade Science & Technology Association.

Now… Continue Reading

Domo arigato, Mr. Animoto, for adding text to videos

Forget those awful photo montage videos on YouTube that teenage fans make for TV shows like “Gossip Girl” and “One Tree Hill.” Animoto, the company that allows anyone to become a music video producer by syncing up photos with tunes, now lets users add text… Continue Reading

Irrepressible widget-maker RockYou targets Asia, raises $17M

RockYou, a company that started out two years ago making simple slideshow widgets for MySpace, and, more recently, applications for social networks including Facebook, is now invading Asia.

It has taken on strategic funding and sweet deals from big regional partners: $14 million from Japanese carrier… Continue Reading

What are ads worth on social networks? Here’s some more info

Earlier this year, Google complained about how little money it was making from the search and keywords ads that it runs on MySpace. But advertising on social networks is still being figured out. MySpace itself, along with rivals like Facebook and a range of startups,… Continue Reading

Roundup: TV news still main source for some, HP has strong quarter, free subway tickets? and more

Here’s the latest action:

Study: Educated older people still get most of their news from television — The “educated” demographic, 23 percent of the U.S. population, also gets news online, according to a buzzword-laden report by The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. This… Continue Reading

Sarah Lacy claims New York Times book review unfairly slammed her Web 2.0 book, “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good”

A while back, I finished reading Sarah Lacy’s book on Web 2.0’s rise in Silicon Valley, “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good.” I let my thoughts percolate on it until I saw the New York Times review of the book by tech journalist Katie Hafner…. Continue Reading

Content aggregator Spleak adds 3 new online news channels

Spleak Media Network, a content aggregation platform, has added new themes to its portfolio of content communities on the web in partnership with major content publishers.

The company takes news from partnering publishers, such as gossip about Lindsay Lohan, and publishes it across a broad set… Continue Reading

Roundup: Facebook suspends Super Wall, Khosla joins Obama and more

Here’s the latest action:

Facebook suspends RockYou’s Super Wall – The social networking site has turned off the Facebook application’s viral aspects, like invitations and notifications, presumably as part of its efforts to crack down on spammy app activity. RockYou chief executive Lance Tokuda says he’s… Continue Reading

Report: RockYou looks at raising another round, because it can

RockYou. Along with Slide, it’s one of the iconic companies in the recent boomlet of social networking applications — fancy widgets that let third party developers better access to social network users, for activities like casual online games.

But these social networking applications, like social networks… Continue Reading

Widget-maker RockYou raises $35M, claims larger reach than Slide

updated with valuation

RockYou, the Silicon Valley widget company that lets millions of people post slide-shows on Web sites and play games on platforms like Facebook, has raised $35 million more in a third round of funding.

VentureBeat learned of the news Friday, and confirmed it over… Continue Reading

Big widget company RockYou raises a mere $1M, to tide it over

updated

RockYou, the Silicon Valley that lets people post photo slide-shows on Web sites, has raised $1 million to tide it over while it decides whether to proceed with a larger financing round or to sell.

The San Mateo, Calif. company is navigating some stormy changes in… Continue Reading

RockYou between a funding rock and an acquisition

RockYou, the fast-growing online widget company — that lets you post images and slideshows in social networks and other web sites — has apparently hit a major juncture in its decision to raise funding or not. And I’m wondering if it may have decided to… Continue Reading

A roundup of scenery from the Web 2.0 Expo: an annotated photo gallery

I spent four days this week at the Web 2.0 Expo at the Moscone West convention center in San Francisco. Here is a summary of the scene, including photos and my impressions of the show.

I attended the RockYou/Clearspring/Mixercast reception on Tuesday night at Bong Su,… Continue Reading

Social network Hi5’s developer platform is more successful (and spammier?) than MySpace’s [updated]

Updated with commentary from RockYou

It’s a tale of two social network developer platforms. Hi5, a site popular in some Spanish-speaking Latin American countries and other regions around the world, launched its platform at the beginning of this month — and the third parties that have… Continue Reading

RockYou, another web company looking to raise a whopper round

We’ve been covering how a wide range of web companies have been looking to raise rounds that value them in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Add another one to the list: Widget company RockYou. According to rumors, San Mateo, Calif.-based RockYou hired investment bank… Continue Reading

Myspace: A place for successful Facebook app developers to get rich, maybe

Starting this Tuesday, MySpace is giving all developers the chance to start building their own applications for the site using its developer platform. Then, in a month, the company will let users start adding any of these creations.

MySpace is the largest social network in the… Continue Reading

Widget companies are growing, helped by Facebook

Update

Companies that make widgets grew quickly last year. The largest four — Slide, Myspace, Clearspring and Rockyou — each reached more than 100 million people around the world last November, according to web analytics company Comscore. [Update: Some widgets companies are taking issue with Comscore’s… Continue Reading

Clearspring launches widgets for Madison Avenue

In the latest evolution of this fast-paced but not yet lucrative world of widgets, Clearspring, a leading widget company, has launched an ad network for widgets (sample widget left).

It comes at a time when advertising agencies on Madison Avenue are finally getting comfortable with the… Continue Reading

Roundup: LGC Wireless bought, RockYou also bought? and more

1) LGC Wireless to be acquired by telecom components company
2) Rumors abound that News Corp. is buying RockYou for hundreds of millions of dollars
3) Myspace + Skype: newly-joined parts of the “Web 2.0 address book”
4) Apple finally decides to return developers’ love
5) Treemo, another mobile… Continue Reading

Roundup: Facebook search; Business 2.0 folds; Silverlight launches; and more

Here’s the latest action:

 Facebook to launch people search in one month — Facebook will let search engines find and display very basic information from your Facebook profile, including only your name and the option to message you or friend you, it announced early this morning.

This way,… Continue Reading