softbank

KickApps CEO Alex Blum cofrimed yesterday the company raised a Sereies C round of $14M with a new lead investor, North Atlantic Capital.
KickApps provides on-demand social media applications and platforms for leading publishers. Big media companies love them because it lets them put social features on sites they already control.
Current properties they power include: San Francisco 49ers, Gossip Girl, Rachel Ray’s Incredible People, the McCainSpace and more.
40 percent of its business is now overseas, including a Guinness World Records social destination.
It’s largest competitor Ning has been losing customers like WarnerBros over the past year because of Ning’s hands off approach to helping publishers control and manage their own enviornment like KickApps does.
Existing investors that joined the round include Softbank, Spark Prism and Jarl Mohn.

Social network widget maker RockYou has raised $14 million from Japan’s SoftBank (largest investor in Yahoo Japan) and $3 million from Korea’s SK Telecom.
RockYou & SoftBank are creating a joint venture company with their sites set on three major distribution opportunities:
- Xianoei, “Chinese Facebook” that rolled out an app platform similar to Zuckerberg’s earlier this year. Recently the site unveiled a virtual currency system that requires the fake dollars to be purchased by real cash to buy virtual goods, a space that RockYou is no stranger to thanks to Facebook. (SoftBank has invested $400M into Xianoei.)
- Yahoo Japan, which is bigger than Google in the country, is launching its own version of Yahoo’s developer platform that RockYou could gain a foothold in, especially thanks to SoftBank’s influence.
- iPhone. SoftBank is Japan’s iPhone carrier with a reach of 700 million mobile users. (Fun fact: iPhones sold by SoftBank come with a Yahoo Japan icon in the launchpad.)
SK Telecom owns Cyworld, a virtual world that is gaining traction in Korea (17m new subscribers/mo). If they integrate w/ OpenSocial, RockYou’s apps could easily be implemented.
RockYou currently reaches 100 million social network users per month.
After a prior round for $35 milion, RockYou’s total funding now comes to $52 million.

KickApps Raises $14M More For On-Demand Social Media. See Ya Ning!