Widget maker RockYou announced today that it has nabbed a $17 million investment from two Asian firms, SoftBank Group and SK Telecom Ventures.

The investment will be added to $35 million from the Redwood City, Calif.-based start-up’s C round in June. Overall, RockYou has raised a total of $67 million and–before the current econalypse–had previously reported a $400 million valuation.

In a video with BoomTown, the company’s co-founders, CEO Lance Tokuda and CTO Jia Shen, said the new funding would be used to expand into the Asia-Pacific market, add offices and staff and make acquisitions.

Read More »

RockYou, widget maker, is the latest example of a sane valuation heartbreaker, as it is undertaking efforts to secure an investment from mainstream financing firms that would value the company at between $300 million and $400 million.

First reported by Valleywag last night, the start-up, said one source, “is being squired around Wall Street” by investment behemoth Morgan Stanley, in search of the same kind of deal its rival Slide got in January.

Read More »

After my visit to Netvibes, I also went over to another cool Web company here that I have been following for a while: Dailymotion.
Based in Paris and funded with $32 million from Atlas Venture and Partech International, the video-sharing site positions itself these days as kind of an anti-YouTube–better at programming, easier to use with [...]

Read More »

So I recently ventured into the heart of the empire of toddler developers with a visit to the San Mateo, Calif., HQ of RockYou, the super-popular maker of third-party apps on hot social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.
I have been on a bit of a grumpy tear of late about the juvenile nature of [...]

Read More »