RockYou is a company that designs widgets and applications for social networks such as MySpace and Facebook. It is considered one of the most successful companies based on installations. The company has raised $50 million in Series D from Softbank recently.

The company launched in November 2005 and raised $119 million in total capital. The company has revenues of about $30 to $40 million per year. RockYou has about 10 million registered users and 150 million widget views per day. The company was founded by Lance Tokuda and Jia Shen.

Previous investors in the company include First Round Capital, Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Partech International, SK Telecom Ventures, and Doll Capital Management. RockYou makes revenues from virtual goods and advertising along with in-game offers.

Burst Media is an advertising network that acts as a broker for publishing websites. Pulse2 worked with Burst Media in the past, but eventually switched over to our partners such as Tribal Fusion and Kontera. Burst bought out Giant Realm for $2.1 million in cash and stock. This is a blow but not a complete loss to Giant Realm’s investors which put in about $9 million. Some of Giant Realm’s investors include Comcast, SoftBank Capital, The William Morris Agency, and the Edison Venture Fund.

Giant Realm focused on men’s interest websites with a focus on games and TV. It was intended to be a competitor of Glam Media, but it never took off as well as planned. The company had even hired a direct sales force in New York. The company will continue to operate as it was before under the Burst name.

“In a short period of time, Giant Realm has demonstrated its ability to succeed in building a top-notch entertainment network targeting the highly coveted male audience,” stated Burst Media CEO Jarvis Coffin in a press release. “This acquisition represents a tremendous opportunity for us to support vertical content providers and present advertisers with an effective platform for reaching their well-qualified, targeted audiences.”

El Segundo, Calif.-based PureVideo Networks, Inc. (PureVideo.com) has just raised another round of funding from Softbank Capital.  The first round was $5.6 million in December 2005.  And the second round of funding was $2.85 million.

PureVideo makes revenue from syndicating content for Microsoft, Yahoo!, Sony, AOL, Helio, etc.  PureVideo’s streams 50 million videos to 13+ million plus visitors every month.  On PureVideo.com, PureVideo Search resides.  PureVideo.com also features a downloadable media toolbar and a customizable user page.

PureVideo Networks owns StupidVideos.com, GrindTV.com, HollywoodUpclose.com, and PoliticsUpClose.com.  The company was founded by Greg Morrow and he is also the President.  Before PureVideo, Morrow worked as a General Manager of Yahoo! Music International.  Morrow started MUSICVIDEOS.com which was acquired by LAUNCH.  And then Yahoo! acquired LAUNCH so he found himself starting at Yahoo! as the LAUNCH Media VP of Business Development.

SoftBank is also an investor in KickApps Corporation, Voxant Inc., and Associated Content Inc.

KickApps is a user-generated video and social networking website that has gained popularity by the ease of use and creation of widgets.  These widgets have found themselves on MySpace pages, the BET Awards 07 website, Vibe.com, and Genesis-Space.

According to paidContent, KickApps has just raised $11 million in second round funding.  SoftBank Capital is a new investor and joins the returning investors, Prism VentureWorks and Spark Capital.  KickApps’ competitor, Ning recently raised $44 million.

Last year, KickApps reaised $6 million in funding for its first round.  KickApps hired Michael Chin as the Senior VP of Marketing from Bite Communications, a global communications consulting company.  KickApps is based in New York, New York.