RockYou raises $1M, keeps rocking. but for how long?

May 26th, 2008 by Avatar X Leave a reply »

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RockYou, you know the #2 widget services provider in most social networks, just raised a very modest $1M in funding as reported by Matt Marshall over venturebeat.

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I think they raised such a quantity for the sake to have some cash flow and liquid money. the question is of course: why so little when we just have seen Clearspring raise 18 million?.

It was reported that they wanted to raise a insane $70M sum over a also insane $400M valuation. but that they could not do so in comfortable terms.  no surprise there. for such a money raise i bet the potential investors wanted a proportional play in the company. that is understandable considering the insane amount of money we are talking about when we remember that RockYou is a WEB Widget services provider only.

Matt makes a weird analogy of comparing Facebook with RockYou and call RockYou a platform.

RockYou is not a platform or a developer engine. that is the whole problem it should face in the future along with its main competitor Slide. the only way i can see RockYou and Slide for that matter to thrive for the future to come is that they either become a developer platform for widgets, Expand dramatically their Widget Offerings or merge into one company. 

Otherwise, i think RockYou and Slide are not long term viable companies. they really need to start looking into the less ephemeral “fun” widgets and start developing some actual Good Widget/ Widget-app Services for 2008 and beyond.

RockYou

Related posts:

  1. RockYou grabs $35m round of funding, wants to hurt Slide valuation.
  2. RockYou Raises Another $17 Million In Funding From Softbank
  3. Slide Raises 50 Millions, valuated at 500 Millions
  4. RockYou.com
  5. RockYou Wants To Be A Social Network Game Widget Powerhouse

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