Earlier today I wrote about one video company buying another in order to compete further with YouTube. To be honest, I had never heard of Motionbox or Viddyou, but one YouTube competitor I have heard of is DailyMotion. DailyMotion has just raised $22.1 million giving them a total of $65.6 million.

DailyMotion is based in France and specializes on both independent films along with user-generated movies. DailyMotion CEO Cedric Tornay said that the funding will be used to strengthen the balane sheet and fund the growth of the company. DailyMotion’s revenue is expected to grow about 50% this year and they are profitable.

That is Impressive for a website that spends tons of money on bandwidth and storage. YouTube reportedly costs Google $2 million per day to keep alive.

The investors in this round of funding includes Atlas Venture, AGF Private Equity, Advent Venture Partners, and Partech International.

Dailymotion.com is a user-generated content video website that competes directly with YouTube.  Dailymotion is a top 100 global website on Alexa.  The company was started in France and raised $34 million in funding two years ago from Advent Venture Partners LLP and AGF Private Equity of Paris.  This is on top of the $9.5 million in funding that was provided by Atlas Ventures and Partech International.

The company has also hired Ian Brotherston, a former AOL executive as their CEO.  Ian will be taking the place of Mark Zaleski, who is expected to take a non-executive chairman position.

DailyMotion’s revenue is around $16.2 million, but it is not enough to cover bandwidth costs.  YouTube on the other hand consumes close to $2 million per day in bandwidth costs and makes about $513-$663 million per year.

[via VentureBeat]

RockYou announced today that they have raised $35 million Series C in funding.  The firms that invested in RockYou includes DCM, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Partech International, and Sequoia.  RockYou! created some of the more viral applications on Facebook including Vampires, Superwall, and Likeness.  RockYou! also created marketing campaigns for Microsoft, CBS, Sony, New Line, and Paramount. 

“DCM 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,” stated co-founder of DCM, David Chao. “With the current momentum, RockYou is positioned to become a top-10 Internet property in the world in the near future.”

RockYou! will use the funding to grow their team and to create more applications.  RockYou! receives roughly 87.5 million unique monthly visitors and 2.7 billion page views.  RockYou! uses Google OpenSocial to spread their applications across Hi5, MySpace, and Orkut. 

“RockYou is incredibly proud to announce our funding, and are very pleased to be able to work with DCM and be a part of their impressive portfolio. RockYou is entering into a very exciting time both with the applications we are developing, and also with the expansion of our social advertising platform,” stated Lance Tokuda, the CEO of RockYou!