SOURCE: RockYou

 

REDWOOD CITY, CA--(Marketwire - November 3, 2008) - RockYou, the leading innovator, creator and distributor of applications on the social web, today announced an additional $17M in investments from Softbank, leading shareholder of Yahoo! Japan, and SK Telecom Ventures, the venture capital arm of SK Telecom. In June of 2008 RockYou announced an initial C Round investment of $35M, led by DCM; this strategic round brings the company's funding to a total of $67M.

The combined strategic financing will enable RockYou to extend their presence in the Asia-Pacific market. RockYou has been focusing development efforts overseas, including expansion into China's largest social network, Xiaonei.

SoftBank and RockYou will also set up a new joint venture company that will develop widget and application products and services for use on PCs and mobile devices in the Asian market, in particular the Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Chinese markets. Each of the JV Partners will contribute technology, know-how, systems and human resources to the Joint Venture.

The new financing will also fuel RockYou's domestic growth, including the opening of New York, Los Angeles and Detroit offices. The company will also explore the acquisition of applications that can leverage RockYou's existing network in line with the company's product roadmap.

In addition, RockYou will continue to grow the internal ad sales force, develop innovative channels for brands and vertical markets to utilize the RockYou Ads network, including Automotive, Retail and Entertainment specific application verticals. Launched earlier this year, the RockYou Ads network has given brands such as eBay Autos, Gap and Toyota the ability to launch customized applications and interactive campaigns to capture the attention of social network users. RockYou's applications are available on all of the major social networks, including Bebo, Facebook, Friendster, hi5 and MySpace. Today RockYou's reach spans 100M monthly uniques with over 8 billion page views.

Quotes:

Lance Tokuda, RockYou CEO and Founder

"We are thrilled to welcome Softbank and SK Telecom Ventures as strategic investors. They will play a leading role as we extend the RockYou brand throughout Asia. We are also happy to announce the formation of a joint venture between RockYou and Softbank. The JV will create and distribute mobile and social web applications in Asia."

Patrick Chung, Managing Director, SK Telecom Ventures

"RockYou has shown unprecedented growth for an early stage company. We look forward to working closely with RockYou to help them further expand their domestic and Asian operations, particularly in Korea."

About RockYou

RockYou is the leading innovator, creator and distributor of applications on the social web. The RockYou Ads network provides customized application-based branding and advertising campaigns that can be easily distributed across social networking platforms and engage directly with active users. RockYou Ads hosts the largest social advertising network spanning social network platforms including Bebo, hi5, Facebook, Friendster and MySpace. Headquartered in Redwood City, California, RockYou is funded by DCM, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Partech International and Sequoia Capital, SK Telecom Ventures and Softbank. For more information about RockYou, please visit http://rockyou.com/corp/about.php

To learn more about RockYou Ads, please visit http://rockyouads.com

Access RockYouSuperBlog at http://blog.rockyouads.com

About SoftBank Group

SOFTBANK GROUP offers its customers a range of services including mobile communications, broadband infrastructure, fixed-line telecommunications, internet culture, e-Commerce, and others. SOFTBANK MOBILE achieved the No. 1 position in net additions for FY 2007 in the Japanese market, with a total of 19,633,200 subscribers as of September 2008.

For more information, visit http://www.softbank.co.jp/en/index.html

About SK Telecom Ventures

SK Telecom Ventures, headquartered in Menlo Park, California, is a dedicated venture capital fund that looks to invest in companies that can leverage relationships with the fund's sole limited partner, SK Telecom. SK Telecom (NYSE: SKM) (KSE: 017670) is the top wireless communication provider in Korea, where it has more than 22 million subscribers, accounting for more than 50% of the total market. The company, established in 1984, reached KRW 11.28 trillion in revenue in 2007. SK Telecom was the first to launch and commercialized CDMA, CDMA 2001x,CDMA EV-DO and HSDPA networks, and it currently provides cellular, wireless internet, mobile media, global roaming service and more. For more information about SK Telecom Ventures, please visit http://www.sktvc.com