RockYou raises $35 million
Widgetmaker RockYou raised $35 million from venture firm Doll Capital Management and private investors. Rumor has the deal setting RockYou's value near $400 million. RockYou created Facebook widgets SuperWall, Vampires, Likeness, X Me and claims 87.5 million visitors a month and 2.7 billion pageviews. Paying advertisers on RockYou include Paramount, New Line Cinema, Sony, Microsoft, and CBS. But they're not paying much.
Social media advertising revenues across the Internet totaled only $600 million in 2007. Webwide ad revenues generated $18 billion. Social media gets such a small piece because ad buyers consider its inventory market-saturated junk at worst and too difficult of an ad buy at best. Not even Google's figured the trick out yet on MySpace. Nobody told DCM cofounder and general partner David Chao, who "believes that RockYou will be the catalyst of this new global ecosystem that delivers next-generation advertisements through its innovative advertising network and social applications," according to the press release. (Photo by califrayray)