RockYou, a popular tool for putting slideshows on MySpace, Friendster, Hi5 and Xanga, has taken $1.5 million in a round led by Sequoia Capital. The Palo Alto-based company is a great example of a lightweight 2.0 play: you can import images from your Photobucket account or MySpace profile and create a widget to post on any social networking site (see also Feeding the MySpace Beast). What's more, there's no need to register on RockYou - this lowers the barrier to usage even further. The business model appears to be advertising, donations and paid accounts - the "Rock Star" account costs $5 per year and comes with unlimited bandwidth and support for larger images.
RockYou is incredibly easy to use - you can add themes, create captions and insert slide transitions effortlessly. Nonetheless, the service is being squeezed by Photobucket itself, which now provides its own slideshow tool and has much higher usage among MySpace users. Competitor Slide is also strong. However, the market will likely support multiple players, and RockYou still has plenty of mindshare with the MySpace crowd.
