TECH CRUNCH - July 1 - RockYou is continuing its acquisition strategy today with the purchase of Australian social game developer 3 Blokes. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded in 2006, 3 Blokes has developed 4 social games for Facebook, including their most recent title, Galactic Trader, a space trading and combat game with 200K monthly active users.
RockYou Buys UK-Based Social Gaming Startup Playdemic
TECH CRUNCH - Jan 13 - RockYou says Playdemic will operate independently as a subsidiary studio and develop Facebook games for a mainstream audience. Paul Gouge, Playdemic CEO and founder, will lead the studio as VP and General Manager. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
RockYou Had Layoffs
TECH CRUNCH - Oct 15 - RockYou, a social network app developer, has had substantial layoffs. The company says that it has “restructured the organization” in the last couple of days, and that going forward it is going to focus exclusively on social games, where it “sees the largest opportunity”. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
RockYou Raises Another $10 Million
TECH CRUNCH - June 7 - Social network app developer
and advertising platform RockYou has raised another $10M in funding
from SoftBank. With the deal, the company has acquired a majority of
the shares in its joint venture, RockYou Asia. The company previously
raised a $50M in funding last November. This latest investment brings
the startup’s total funding to $127M. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
RockYou Looks Past China’s Internet Users
WSJ - Apr 11 - China has the attention of RockYou, one of the earliest
developers of widgets for social networks. RockYou CTO and co-founder
Jia Shen said that the company, which plans to expand its presence in
Asia, is “actively” looking at acquisition targets in China rather than
more users because social games are less lucrative here than in other
markets, mostly due to a lack of openness of Chinese social networks. FULL ARTICLE @ WSJ
RockYou Sued Over Data Breach
CNET NEWS - Dec 31 - An Indiana man filed a lawsuit against RockYou
this week alleging that the provider of social-networking apps failed
to secure its network and protect customer data, enabling a hacker to
grab passwords of 32M users earlier this month. The suit claims RockYou
failed to protect sensitive user data including e-mail addresses,
passwords, and login credentials for social networks like Facebook and
MySpace and was negligent in storing data in plaintext. FULL ARTICLE @ CNET NEWS
RockYou Hack Exposes 30 Million Accounts
IT BUSINESS EDGE - Dec 17 - Social-networking app maker RockYou
suffered a database breach that allowed hackers to access username and
password on more than 30M people. RockYou immediately brought down the
site and kept it down until a security patch was in place. RockYou
confirms that no application accounts on Facebook were impacted by this
hack. FULL ARTICLE @ IT BUSINESS EDGE
RockYou Raises $50 Million
TECH CRUNCH - Nov 16 - Social network app developer and advertising
platform RockYou has raised $50M in a Series D round of financing from
existing investor Softbank. RockYou, which launched in Nov 2005, has
now raised $119M in capital and has revenues rumored in the $30M to
$40M/year range. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
Facebook, MySpace, Zynga, RockYou, Offerpal, SuperRewards & More May Face Class Action Suit
Niche Social Sites Seek Growth Under Facebook's Shadow
See all posts on Ning See all posts on Rock You
See all posts on Facebook See all posts on Zynga
See all posts on Slide
hi5 And RockYou Partner
MARKET WIRE -- May 13 -- hi5 announced a partnership to distribute RockYou Pets game to hi5's 63m global users through the hi5 Games channel. RockYou will exclusively accept hi5 Coins, hi5's virtual currency, for payments in the hi5 version of the game. The partnership marks the first time a major social site has opened its payments platform to a leading social application developer, enabling better monetization opportunities for both companies. FULL ARTICLE @ MARKET WIRE
RockYou Adds Video Ads To Widget Network
ONLINE MEDIA DAILY -- Feb 3 -- Aiming to boost ad revenue, RockYou is adding new
video ad formats to its widget ad network. RockYou, whose applications boast
more than 130m users worldwide, promises it can deliver as many as 10m video
views per day. The company's popular Super Wall app for sharing content on
Facebook alone has 35.7m installs and 16.2m monthly users. FULL ARTICLE @ MEDIA POST
RockYou Secures $17 Million
MASHABLE -- Nov 3 -- RockYou, a widget maker, is getting an
additional $17m, which brings their C Round total to $52m. This investment comes from Softbank, leading shareholder of Yahoo!
Japan, and SK Telecom Ventures, the venture capital arm of SK Telecom;
initial C Round investment of $35m was led by DCM. SoftBank and RockYou will set up a new joint venture company to develop
widgets for use on PCs and mobiles in the Japanese, Korean, Russian,
and Chinese markets. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE
OpenSocial Reaches 350 Million Users
TECH CRUNCH -- Aug 21 -- And it will soon reach 500m as four more social networks and services prepare to launch by the end of of September. There are about 4,500 different apps so far, which have been installed more than 150 million times. For Hi5 about 50% of members use an OpenSocial app at least once a day. There are 1,800 OpenSocial apps on hi5 alone, which have been installed 66 million times, so that may be representative of OpenSocial usage in general. In contrast, Facebook, which is open-sourcing its own platform for developers, has nearly 37,000 apps, which have been installed 715 million times. RockYou's apps alone have been installed 124 million times on Facebook. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
See all posts on hi5
See all posts on Facebook
See all posts on RockYou
Facebook Continues War On App Developers
TECH CRUNCH -- July 7 -- Facebook
is continuing its war on Facebook apps that push the limits on
acceptable user interaction. Last week it was Slide's Top Friends App,
which it briefly suspended. Later Facebook also suspended Social Me.
This time they're targeting Slide's rival RockYou and their Super
Wall application, which tends to have a lot of spammy user content. But
instead of shutting down the application wholesale, they've simply
turned off the viral components of the app - invitations,
notifications, etc. A month ago Super Wall
had 2.4m average daily users. Today it's 600,000 and falling
fast. RockYou CEO Lance Tokuda says they're working with Facebook to
fix the issues and expect things to return to normal soon. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
Social Ads Rev Up Revenue
ADOTAS -- June 16 -- Social gaming on social networks has emerged as a sector that is not only engaging millions of users
daily, but is proving to be very lucrative for developers and
advertising networks alike. There are individual
developers out there making more than a million a year, often from just
one app. Many developers are making $10,000 to $20,000 per day.
According to
DeveloperAnalytics.com, some of the hottest applications on Facebook
have more than two million unique Daily Active Users (DAUs).
1. Super Wall - 2,521,807 DAUs, developer: RockYou!
2. FunWall - 2,381,118, developer: Slide
3. Top Friends - 1,748,901, developer: Slide
4. Bumper Sticker - 1,445,335
5. Owned ! - 848,756, developer: Coolapps.com
VCs are pouring money into the social gaming marketplace. RockYou recently raised $35m in a Series C
funding round. Slide, snagged
an even larger $50m in funding. A month ago Social Gaming
Network received
$15 million in funding.
FULL ARTICLE @ ADOTAS
RockYou Raises $35 Million
MASHABLE -- June 9 -- RockYou has closed its own massive funding deal: a $35m Series C round, led by DCM. RockYou says its network now reaches 87.5m people each month, who in turn generate 2.7 billion page views. The company also points out that it's not just a Facebook app developer. More than 10m applications have now been installed on the MySpace, hi5, and Orkut platforms. FULL ARTICLE @ MASHABLE
Photobucket Plays Catch Up
TECH CRUNCH -- Apr 22 -- Photobucket,
acquired by Fox Interactive Media in May 2007 for $300m, is
releasing their API to the public today and will allow third party
developers to build photo/video storage and visualization to their
applications. Adobe, AOL, FotoFlexer, Intercasting, RockYou, Slide and
Snapvine are being announced as launch partners. FULL ARTICLE @ TECH CRUNCH
Mark Brooks
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