RockYou, one of the largest developers and ad networks built around Facebook’s platform, just raised $50 million in venture funding from Softbank. That brings RockYou’s total funding to $119 million from investors including Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Partech International and DCM. Softbank was the only participant in this round, the company says.

Venture capital firms have got to be a bit emboldened about companies built around Facebook’s platform given last week’s sale of Playfish to Electronic Arts for as much as $400 million. RockYou is a bit different — it operates a distributed ad network across Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Orkut, Hi5 and Friendster. The company is pushing into virtual goods with a new gifts app on MySpace.



Go to Full Article