Quick RockYou Update

We have some ridiculous things going on at RockYou these days. Our owned/operated social applications on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, Orkut, hi5, etc have crossed 50M unique visitors a month and over 1.2B monetized PVs (and I mean actual visitors not just 'viewers'). Our ad network for social media, representing over 400 publishers, has grown to 8B impressions and 90M global uniques a month.

A lot of folks continue to heavily discount social platforms' potential for developers and their overall monetization. Let me be blunt. There's a massive opportunity in this space, and RockYou continues to see material, growing business from agencies, advertisers and virtual goods alike. Social networking/engagement is the fastest growing and now primary activity on the web (and soon the phone). To not have some type of deep exposure in this space (whether as a developer or advertiser) is tantamount to missing the entire scope of Internet usage now and what's to come for the next 3-5 years. Are their risks? No doubt. But building on top of Facebook, MySpace, Orkut is no more or less risky than building a site dependent on SEO from Google. At least with the social platforms, you're given some notice of changes to come.

More to tell soon, but wanted to put out this video of our panel at MIXX in NYC last week. Brian Morrissey, editor of digital marketing at Adweek moderated. The other participants included Karsten Weide, Program Director, Digital Media & Entertainment, IDC, Danielle Knopf, VP of Social Media at Deep Focus, Terri Walter, VP of Emerging Media, Avenue A-Razorfish and myself. Never mind that I seem to have swallowed a lemon at the beginning of the video :)


Mixx 2.8 Conference - Ro Choy from Rock You on Vimeo.