Posts Tagged ‘rockyou’

And the money just kept a rollin’ – Zynga raises $15 million

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

If you’d been wagering on the explosion of venture capital investments in social gaming firms late in 2009, you’d be making off like a bandit right now. Just days after RockYou brought home $50 million in funding, and Playdom announcing their $43 million haul – according to VentureBeat, the biggest fish in the pound, Zynga has recently raised an additional $15.18 million in funding.

Zynga founder Mark Pincus

Zynga founder Mark Pincus

With more than 196 million users on Facebook alone, Zynga is clearly the market dominator right now. According to the VC filing, there were no new investors listed, presuming that the additional funding has arrived from previous or currently funding partners. This latest round of funding is equal to almost half the initial $40 million Zynga raised in their first round of VC funding. Previous venture capital has been provided by Kleiner Perkins, Foundry Group, Avalon Ventures, Institutional Venture Partners and Union Square Ventures.

This latest influx of cash is only one part of the party going on at Zynga. The social gaming company current enjoys the number one app spot on Facebook, with over 65 million monthly users, FarmVille is clearly the industry benchmark to beat.

And while Zynga might be the top of the heap in the Facebook app world, a market that they’ve been less than success in is mobile (read:iPhone) games. In a recent interview with AdAge, Zynga founder Mark Pincus states, “Smartphones. They’re the next frontier in social gaming.” While some might argue that that frontier is already here, we’ve still yet to see what wonders Zynga can do for mobile gaming when given the proper amount of funding and resources to devote to the platform. Could this recent bestowment of funding be earmarked for that exact purpose? And remember, Apple only recently gave the green light to microtransactions within free-to-play games, and area where Zynga shines.

Another way of looking at this new capital is a clear display of faith from investors that the potential class action lawsuit that Zynga and other social gaming companies are looking at is something that can be handled, and shouldn’t slow development.

 

RockYou scores another $50 million

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

After passing on an intial offer to be bought out by EA (who eventually went with Playfish as their social gaming acquisition), Redwood City, California based RockYou has recently secured an additional $50 million in series D funding. This recent influx of cash was lead by SoftBank. The news funds are expected to further enhance RockYou’s current offerings and expand development, boost global brand, as well as create products that are ripe for in-game advertising possibilities.

Currently the largest independent ad network in the social media field, with more than 213 million monthly unique visitors, the company logs over 15 billion monthly impressions. Since it’s inception in November 2005, RockYou (originally called RockMySpace) specializes in providing marketers unique and industry leading solutions to reach specific market segments. Primarily focused on widgets and social applications, RockYou has commented that with this new round of funding they will also begin venturing into the currently rather risky waters of in-game offers, i.e. the Scamville affair.

“RockYou has been an innovator in the social media industry since our launch more than four years ago, and we are excited to expand our relationship with SoftBank with this round of funding,” said Lance Tokuda, co-founder and CEO, RockYou. “In 2009, RockYou is on target to triple our revenue from the previous fiscal year, demonstrating our continued growth in the space.”

With rumored revenues in the $30 – $40 million per year range, if Tokuda’s statement is on track, RockYou is well within the revenues range of major players including Zynga and PlayEAfish.

This latest round of funding brings RockYou’s combined total raised to a healthy $118 million. This round D funding effectively doubles what previous round C had netted – $52 million from SoftBank and SK Telecom Ventures this time last year. In addition to SoftBank and SK Telecom Ventures, Rockyou’s finding arrives via Sequoia Capital, Partech International, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and DCM.

 

RockYou – on track to be on top

Wednesday, November 12th, 2008

Virtual Reality Social Games Worlds Networks can at times be busier than Grand Central at 5:09 on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.  There are lots of players, each with their own unique take and slice on their specific niche.  And while playfish has certainly made a lot of noise over the past few weeks, it’s often the guys in the back of the room that you’ve got to look out for.  RockYou, please step forward.

RockYou is a self described, “innovator, creator, and distributor of widgets and applications on the social web.”  Try saying that one 5 times fast.  In other words, RockYou creates a lot of those cool widgets and apps that are served up daily every time you log in to your facebook account.  RockYou is the creator of popular apps including SuperWall, SuperPets, Likeness, and HugMe while their widget stable includes Slideshows and Corkboard.  Sound familiar, chances are you’ve used one or RockYou’s apps recently?   They also made waves back in July with the purchase of popular apps Speed Racing and Pieces of Flair.  According to insidefacebook.com, at the time of acquisition #11 app Pieces of Flair was clocking 475,000 daily users, and # 27 Speed Racing weighing in with 200,000 users per day.

Insidesocialgames.com’s Top MySpace games for September 24, 2008 places 2 of the top 12 belonging to RockYou, and they consistently rank high on the Facebook Most Active Users directory (Superwall, Hugme, Pieces of Flare, Likeness, and Birthday Cards all ranking in the top 28).

In addition, RockYou also specializes in creating customized branding and marketing solutions that reach consumers in a medium that the feel comfortable with and used to via applications.  They’ve developed applications for any social network including Hi5, MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, Bebo, and Friendster.  Reaching the masses via advertisement through entertainment is nothing new, but few companies are able to do it as well as RockYou.

There has been a bit of confusion regarding just what slice of the social networking pie RockYou is after, as CEO Lance Tokuda was quoted as saying “ We want to be like the Electronic Arts of social networks, and build games for social networks,” at the Startonomics conference in San Francisco in the beginning of October.  While at the same time Brett Errill reported over at his blog that RockYou is still focusing its efforts on their ad network.

Whether Tokuda’s statement was taken out of context or not, I say: Does it matter?  With monetization models popping up all over the place, along with Google’s own entry into the game monetization via advertising, the way I see it, RockYou is already leaps and bounds ahead of their competitors.  With highly popular widgets and applications perfectly positioned in front of users of some of the world’s highest trafficked websites, along with the already existing ad network specialty, RockYou is well on track to becoming a mighty force to be reckoned with.

Find out more about RockYou by visiting them at www.RockYou.com.

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