RockYou Gets Another $10 Million from SoftBank, Buys Majority of Asia Joint Venture
Japanese conglomerate SoftBank has been steadily investing in web companies in the US and around the world, and its latest move is to put an additional $10 million into RockYou.
This is a fifth round of funding for the social application developer, following a fourth round of $50 million from existing investor SoftBank last fall. RockYou, according to the press release, has also bought a majority stake in its joint venture with SoftBank, RockYou Asia — an entity that builds games and other apps for platforms Japan, Korea, China and other Asian markets.
RockYou has managed to grow big on Facebook through simple apps, then build out an advertising network business, then reinvent its app portfolio to make itself a big social game developer — and expand into Asia. While the company has raised a large amount of capital at this point ($127 million in total) its broad efforts appear to be paying off so far.
June 9th, 2010 at 2:01 pm
[...] SoftBank has been investing in many small companies that are looking to take their business on the web and is continuing with this approach in its latest move in investing $10 million into RockYou, reports Inside Social Games. [...]
June 14th, 2010 at 9:26 pm
[...] Zynga, either. The company has also invested heavily in RockYou over the past six months, putting a total of $60 million into the company. Although RockYou’s total monthly active user base on Facebook has fallen [...]