We just got sent an announcement from Hercules Technology Growth Capital to say they've invested $1M in Wallop, the Microsoft Research social networking spin-off.
Wallop already had two VC rounds totalling $13 million from Consor Capital, Bay Partners and Norwest Venture Partners, plus an equity stake from Microsoft. Hercules is said to have provided "equipment based" financing to the company today. Hercules also provided a growth loan of $1 million to an undisclosed Los Angeles-based network "for music and pop culture", which doesn't really narrow down the field.
We haven't had any correspondence with Wallop since launch, so we don't know much about the site's progress. But I just have a hunch that this one doesn't look good from a viral growth/market positioning perspective. Let me try to rationalize that a little. For instance, search: Wallop currently provides no results on Google. Perhaps that's intentional during the private beta or to protect the exclusivity of the network, but it's hard to imagine how you would get a totally Flash-based site to turn up in Google as often as, say, MySpace pages. Facebook doesn't need to rely on Google of course, so that's not a death blow.