VentureBeat

Updated: RockYou raises $50 million for in-game advertising, growth in Asia

RockYou , one of the largest developers and ad networks built around Facebook’s platform, just raised $50 million in venture funding from Softbank. That brings RockYou’s total funding to $119 million from investors including Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Partech International and DCM. Softbank was the only participant in this round, the company says.

Venture capital firms have got to be a bit emboldened about companies built around Facebook’s platform given last week’s sale of Playfish… Continue Reading

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 there’s the N! Leadership Network, a new group for Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals to connect in the business world. Recently founded by Michael Kanazawa, chief executive of consultancy Dissero… 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 to their videos. Text that more closely resembles sleek, movie-esque sequences, not static captions or titles. Combined with the motion graphics, effects and transitions that are the signature of an… 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 Softbank, which is the largest shareholder in Yahoo Japan, and $3 million from the venture arm of Korean carrier SK Telecom.

Redwood city, Calif.-based RockYou could be setting itself up to… 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, are trying to develop forms of ads that attract more clicks and more monetizable actions from users. So here are a few related news tidbits:

Today in New York, Nick O’Neill… 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 demographic is called “Integrators,” according to the language of Pew, and is somewhat similar in behavior to the younger, smaller group of online-focused readers it calls “Net-Newsers.”

Hewlett-Packard had a strong… 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. The NY Times reviewer was critical and Lacy herself feels like it was more like a review of herself than her book. Some of the criticism of the book is… 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 of internet venues such as instant messaging platforms, social networks, destination web sites and mobile phones. Publishers use the service to expand the reach of their publications to online readers.

The… 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 working with Facebook to get the suspended features restored soon. The move follows the shutdown of RockYou competitor Slide’s Top Friends application at the end of June due to a… 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 themselves, are facing more scrutiny these days. Will they ever make serious money?

At least some investors are still excited to find out, reports Vasanth Sridharan at Silicon Alley Insider, who… 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 the weekend with chief executive Lance Tokuda. The company will issue a press release later this morning.

Doll Capital Management led the round, providing $30 million. The remainder $5 million was… 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 the market recently, where investors are more cautious about investing in social media start-ups that may not grow as quickly going forward as they have been.

VentureBeat first reported last week… 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 go a different route.

The company, which is in a cut-throat competition with Slide, needs to raise cash — or sell. It isn’t profitable, and needs to keep up with Slide,… 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, a trendy new Vietnamese restaurant. Three companies sponsored the party and so it made the Web 2.0 froth seem a little less excessive, since they can split the bill. There… 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 applications on the site are reporting impressive growth.

Leading widget company RockYou, for example, says its “SuperFive” application has already been installed two million times in the last couple of weeks…. 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 Morgan Stanley to help it raise a round that would value it at up to $400 million.

Just yesterday, we reported that ad network Federated Media may be close to closing… 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 world, with more than 110 million unique visitors a month, so the platform could quickly rival Facebook’s, which itself has spawned thousands of applications that are used by millions.

Because of… 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 numbers. See below for more.]

Given the recent surge of interest in widgets from advertisers, these numbers help explain why Slide was recently able to raise $50 million at a valuation… 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 idea of buying ads in widgets to get their client companies in front of social network users. A market for widget ads is forming, although its still unclear which forms… 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 and online content sharing service, raises 2.5 million
6) LiveScribe, a near-magical pen for taking written and audio notes at the same time, raises $22 million

LGC Wireless to be acquired by… Continue Reading