metarand

RockYou Raises More Funding To Climb Virtual Superwall

Eric Eldon at VentureBeat has a great piece on RockYou’s move into the Asia Pacific region courtesy of another round of funding from strategic investors in the region, namely Softbank and SK Telecom.

Why Asia Pac you might ask? The answer is – virtual goods.

Cracking the formula for monetizing social networks via virtual goods is the current holy grail. Where better than China to learn the ropes – bigger than web advertising, virtual goods are a $1.2bn business there already.

In addition, Softbank ploughed $400m into Xiaonei – a socnet similar to Facebook, but ahead of the curve: they recently introduced a virtual currency system. Teaming up with these players is a smart move.

UPDATE: Facebook has started to head down a similar track – they’ve moved to a micropayments system as of today.

VentureWrap: Friendster, SpaceX Raise $20M Funding

One of the earlier social networking pioneers, Friendster, has continued its Asian-led comeback with a $20 million infusion from IDG Ventures and previous investors [Benchmark, DAG Ventures, Founders Fund and Kleiner Perkins].

In addition to the cash Friendster has secured Richard Kimber, formerly Google’s South Asian Regional MD, as CEO.

Also raising $20 million is SpaceX, the Elon Musk-led space transporteer. The round was provided by Founders Fund. Musk is a former South African and founder of Paypal and Tesla. The recent test of their Falcon 1 rocket hit a snag with stage separation lock. This led to the craft not achieving orbit. Elon has unequivocally stated that they are still on track – the message from this funding round backs him up.

Founders Fund are having a busy time of it lately. One of their other portfolio companies, Facebook, is apparently contemplating empowering staff to sell off a portion of their vested stock. This accords with the philisophy of letting founders cash out along the journey, which has been a key Founders Fund differentiator – extending it to all employees is an interesting move.

Incidentally LinkedIn is also reportedly [via VentureBeat] contemplating this route.

Metarand Unplugged: TechnologyOne’s Adrian Di Marco On The Lack Of Australian Government Focus on Technology

Headquartered in Brisbane, Australia TechnologyOne is a leading enterprise software solutions provider with a fully integrated “Connected Intelligence” suite of products that places it well ahead of its competitors.

In this session of Metarand Unplugged we talk with Adrian Di Marco, the Founder and Executive Chairman of this ASX-listed company.

Adrian has played a major role in building and supporting the Australian information and communications industry, both through his roles on industry bodies and as an investor in early stage ventures. He talks candidly about the Australian government’s paucity of support for this all important industry.

He sits at the helm of one of Australia’s most successful software companies and is clearly passionate about the space and about creating the right kind of framework and ecosystem in the country that will enable it to achieve benefits for years to come.

His thoughts are not only very pertinent to Australia, but also to any other country and group of entrepreneurs faced with a similar situation.

Stream the Session in Quicktime:

here

Stream the Session as an mp3:

here

IGNite The Site Applications Competition Launches at MySpace devJam

At today’s MySpace devJam in Sydney I launched the IGNite the Site competition. With a cash prize of $4,000 and the opportunity for the winning app to be showcased to over 2.5 million MySpace users, this is a fantastic opportunity for Australian and New Zealand app developers.

To be in the running, developers will need to utilise the MySpace Developer Platform to create an app that both promotes and captures the spirit of IGN.com, the number one gaming and entertainment website in the region.  The winner will be selected after the competition closes on Friday, 5 September 2008 and the judges will be looking for originality and usability and the app’s ability to promote IGN to the masses.

Go here for more info, and to submit an entry send a friedn request for your app to myspace.com/jocorotten with the title of your app and your contact details.

[Disclosure: Randal Leeb-du Toit is an adviser to Fox Interactive Media, the parent company of both MySpace and IGN.]

Announcing MySpace devJams across Australia

Following on from an awesome devJam in Sydney on June 5th, I’m pleased to announce that I’m going to be hosting a further three events in Australia in July.

These events are a must attend for everyone who codes and has an interest in building social media apps.

There will be door prizes and the opportunity to head over to San Francisco and/or Tokyo – read more about these opportunities and each of the events from the following links:

• Sydney July 12
• Melbourne July 19
• Games July 26

We are working on rolling out similar events in other major cities across Australia.

I’d like to thank the guys from Mitchellake for providing us with their uber cool offices for these events.

Borders Sells Off Australia

Borders has finalized the sale of its Australian, New Zealand and Singapore businesses in a transaction worth approximately $104M.

The purchaser, Pacific Equity Partners-owned book retailer A&R Whitcoulls Group Holdings, had to front up with $90M in cash and will also make deferred payments of $14M. In exchange they’ll add 30 bookstores to their portfolio.

Whitcoulls was formerly known as WH Smith Asia Pacific and its portfolio of book and related products companies includes Angus & Robertson, Whitcoulls, Calendar Club, Supanews and a Travel division.

Are The Odds Stacked Against The Mobile Internet Being A Success?

There is a lot of buzz these days around the mobile Internet. Kleiner Perkins has set up an iPhone venture fund and Metarand itself has included two mobile ventures in its top three Australian social media startups for 2008.

But there are caveats and traps waiting for the uninitiated in this arena. Joi Ito explains:

I don’t think there is anything wrong with mobile or with some of the great new mobile applications and devices, but we have to be careful to remember that most mobile networks that actually work are built on infrastructure that is operated by a small number of mobile operators who use a lot of regulated and closed technology.

Joi compares the open innovation culture that exists within the broader Internet arena with the telco landscape which conists of overregulated, giant vendor ecologies.

He makes a very good point. Countries that have a small number of dominant telcos are littered with the remains of former bright-eyed startups who thought they could feed off the giants.  Only to find that they were not able to get their product onto the carrier any time under an 18 month lead time. And when they finally do get on-deck they are squeezed on price and the carrier’s sales staff do not push them to their customers.

The odds are stacked big time, but for companies who are able to work their way around a reliance on carriers there is loads of upside.

[via Boing Boing, picture courtesy of Mixmaster]

Mobile Virtual Worlds: Android Takes Over Second Life

Tokyo-based Eitarosoft has developed a 3D virtual world service running on Google’s mobile platform Android.

Called Lamity, this virtual world can be accessed via any Android-mounted mobile device. In addition, up to 400 users can simultaneously access the same space on Lamity. This is more than ten times the number who can hang out together in the same place in Second Life.

Eitarosoft’s shareholders include tier one Japanese investment groups such as Japan Asia Investment, JAFCO, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital and Nomura Securities.

They have a strong background in mobile 3D, having developed the first i-mode application to display 3D graphics in 2002.

Lamity includes multiple and dual chat features. It also allows for web pages to be viewed simultaneously and stream video through a built-in movie function. A trailer for the movie “Vantage Point” was distributed through this feature ahead of its February premier.

A Call For Worldwide Solidarity: Global Mourning Period In Support Of China’s Earthquake Victims

The Chinese government has called for a 3-day mourning period to honor the passing of thousands of civilians killed in the recent Sichuan Wenchang earthquake.

As part of this call, they have issued an edict that entertainment-based websites and programming shut down over this period.

A bitchmeme sprung up around this on Friendfeed with some high profile bloggers jumping into the fray and causing tempers to rise amongst Chinese bloggers.

I can understand the tug between total freedom (as perceived  by many of us westerners) and the authoritarian approach of the Chinese government. However, looked at in context this is a significant inflection point. Paul Denlinger explains that in terms of China’s track record of not openly recognizing calamities, calling for this 3-day mourning period is a significant step forward.

Looked at in the broader 2008 context of the upcoming Olympic Games and the growing level of angst and misunderstanding between the peoples of China and the West, I believe we should come together and embrace this mourning period globally.  In the spirt of unity that the Olympics signify let us unite around Paul’s simple rule:

If you reach out and treat people like friends, they tend to act like friends…

Remember, earthquakes are a global phenomenon and can happed anywhere, anytime — how would you like to have the world react to such a disaster happening near you. As I was writing this a small earthquake was recorded in Central California measuring 2.6.

[Picture courtesy of yelingyang]

China’s Leading Blogger Shares Nation’s Thoughts On Olympics

Hong Huang spent her youth in the US before returning to China to become the country’s top blogger. She is intimately tapped into the country’s zeitgeist both through her role in the media and her family’s place in defining its culture – her mother was Mao Zedong’s English teacher.

In this fascinating interview she talks about her country’s nationalism and pride and how the people see the Olympics as a window into their world.

[Hat tip to @kaiserkuo]