RockYou was a company that developed widgets for MySpace and implemented applications for various social networks and Facebook. Since 2014, it has engaged primarily in the purchases of rights to classic video games; it incorporates in-game ads and re-distributes the games.[1]
Based in San Francisco, California, RockYou was founded in 2005 by Lance Tokuda and Jia Shen. The company's first product, a slideshow service, was designed to work as an application widget. Later applications included various forms of voice mail, text and photo stylization, and games. As of December 2007, it was the most successful widget maker for the Facebook platform in terms of total installations.[citation needed]
In May 2007, RockYou was one of the companies invited to participate in F8, the event at which Facebook announced an open platform allowing third parties to develop and operate their own software applications on the Facebook website. Applications made for Facebook include Super Wall,[2] "Hug Me", Likeness, Vampires, Slideshows, Birthdays, MyGifts, and Emote, among others.[3]
In December 2009, RockYou experienced a data breach resulting in the exposure of over 32 million user accounts. This resulted from storing user data in an unencrypted database (including user passwords in plain text instead of using a cryptographic hash) and not patching a ten-year-old SQL vulnerability. RockYou failed to provide a notification of the breach to users and miscommunicated the extent of the breach.[4]
In October 2010, the company completed major layoffs.[5] In November 2010, the company's founder and CEO, Lance Tokuda, stepped down from his position as CEO[6] and was later replaced by Lisa Marino in April 2011.[7]
In 2010, RockYou announced the acquisitions of two game development studios, TirNua[8] and Playdemic,[9] as well as development agreements for two new games from John Romero's social game studio Loot Drop.[10] Playdemic's first game, Gourmet Ranch, was nominated in February 2011 for a Mochi Award for Best Social Game. RockYou's investors include SoftBank,[11]Sequoia Capital,[12] Lightspeed Venture Partners,[13] Partech International,[13] and DCM.[13]
In 2011, the company agreed to undergo two independent security audits to settle a proposed class action in California over a 2009 data breach that exposed millions of passwords and email addresses.[14]
In 2012, the company settled Federal Trade Commission charges. The settlement barred future deceptive claims by the company regarding privacy and data security, required it to implement and maintain a data security program, barred future violations of the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) Rule, and required it to pay a $250,000 civil penalty to settle the COPPA charges.[15]
On June 13, 2012, RockYou acquired Bingo developer Ryzing[16] and relocated its headquarters to San Francisco, California.[17] In August 2012, RockYou launched The Walking Dead Social Game based on AMC's hit series of the same name.[18] In April 2014, RockYou purchased three Playdom social games from Disney: Gardens of Time, Words of Wonder, and City Girl, and announced it is licensing Army Attack, Crazy Penguin Wars, Millionaire City, and Zombie Lane from Digital Chocolate.[19]
In 2015, RockYou purchased The Godfather: Five Families, Kingdoms of Camelot, Edgeworld, Glory of Rome, and Dragons of Atlantis from Kabam.
In 2016, RockYou acquired War of Nations from GREE.
In 2019, RockYou closed down its popular but money-losing PurePlay Poker Game without notice. Shortly after, the RockYou corporate website went dark.
In February 2019, after several Facebook posts promoting "exciting news" and a plan to upgrade servers, RockYou announced the closure of The Godfather: Five Families. Players were given 5 days' notice.
On February 13, 2019, RockYou filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.[20]
Data breach
In December 2009, the company experienced a data breach resulting in the exposure of over 32 million user accounts. The company used an unencrypted database to store user account data, including plaintext passwords (as opposed to password hashes) for its service, as well as passwords to connected accounts at partner sites (including Facebook, Myspace, and webmail services). RockYou would also e-mail the password unencrypted to the user during account recovery. They also did not allow using special characters in the passwords. The hacker used a 10-year-old SQL vulnerability to gain access to the database. The company took days to notify users after the incident, and initially incorrectly reported that the breach only affected older applications when it actually affected all RockYou users.[4]
The full list of passwords exposed as a result of the breach is available in Kali Linux, and has been since its launch in 2013. Due to its easy attainability and comprehensive length, it is commonly used in dictionary attacks.[21]
Friendster was a social network based in Mountain View, California, founded by Jonathan Abrams and launched in March 2003. Later, the company became a social gaming site based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Before Friendster was redesigned, the service allowed users to contact other members, maintain those contacts, and share online content and media with those contacts. The website was also used for dating and discovering new events, bands and hobbies. Users could share videos, photos, messages, and comments with other members via profiles and networks. It is considered one of the original social networks.
Digital Chocolate, Inc. was a video game developer and publisher headquartered in San Mateo, California. It was founded in 2003 by Trip Hawkins, the founder of video game companies Electronic Arts and The 3DO Company. The company focused on developing games for Java ME-based mobile phones, iOS, and Microsoft Windows, and made some non-entertainment titles. Its marketing motto was Seize the minute.
Meebo was an instant messaging and social networking service provider. It was founded in September 2005 by Sandy Jen, Seth Sternberg, and Elaine Wherry, and was based in Mountain View, California. Initially the company offered a web-based instant messenger service, extending its offer in more general online chat and even social networking directions. In June 2012, Google acquired Meebo to merge the company's staff with the Google+ developers team.
hi5 is an American social networking service based in San Francisco, California. It is owned by The Meet Group.
Tagged is a social discovery website based in San Francisco, California, founded in 2004. It allows members to browse the profiles of any other members, and share tags and virtual gifts. Tagged claims it has 300 million members as of 2014. As of September 2011, Quantcast estimates Tagged monthly unique users at 5.9 million in the United States, and 18.6 million globally. Michael Arrington wrote in April 2011 that Tagged is most notable for the ability to grow profitably during the era of Facebook.
Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, U.S. that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and client software. Dropbox was founded in 2007 by MIT students Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi as a startup company, with initial funding from seed accelerator Y Combinator.
(Lil) Green Patch was a Facebook application developed by Ashish Dixit and David King that simulated a small garden on a Facebook user's profile. By tending their and their friends' gardens, the Facebook users were able to raise money for The Nature Conservancy to save the rainforest. In September 2008, it was rated as the number one application on Facebook, ahead of Texas HoldEm Poker. In April 2009, it had slid to a sixth-place ranking.
Zong was a mobile payment company that allowed users to make micropayments on the Internet if they have a postpaid mobile phone. The payments were charged to their mobile phone bills by the mobile operator. The company was acquired by eBay in 2011 and disappeared in 2015.
Zynga Inc. is an American developer running social video game services. It was founded in April 2007, with headquarters in San Mateo, California. The company primarily focuses on mobile and social networking platforms. Zynga states its mission as "connecting the world through games".
Playdom was an online social network game developer popular on Facebook, Google+ and Myspace. The company was founded in the San Francisco Bay Area by University of California, Berkeley graduates Ling Xiao and Chris Wang and Swarthmore College graduate Dan Yue. In 2009, the market for games played on social networking sites was valued at $300 million, consisting mostly of online sales of virtual goods.
Flipboard is a news aggregator and social network aggregation company based in Palo Alto, California, with offices in New York, Vancouver, and Bejiing. Its software, also known as Flipboard, was first released in July 2010. It aggregates content from social media, news feeds, photo sharing sites, and other websites, presents it in magazine format, and allows users to "flip" through the articles, images, and videos being shared. Readers can also save stories into Flipboard magazines. As of March 2016 the company claims there have been 28 million magazines created by users on Flipboard. The service can be accessed via web browser, or by a Flipboard application for Microsoft Windows and macOS, and via mobile apps for iOS and Android. The client software is available at no charge and is localized in 21 languages.
Path was a social networking-enabled photo sharing and messaging service for mobile devices that was launched on 14 November 2010. The service allows users to share up to a total of 50 contacts with their close friends and family. Based in San Francisco, California, the company was founded by Shawn Fanning and former Facebook executive Dave Morin.
Zynga Poker is a social game developed by Zynga as an application for the social-networking website Facebook as well as Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, Windows, MySpace, Tagged, and Google+. It was launched in July 2007.
Badgeville, Inc. was a privately held technology company founded in 2010 with headquarters in Redwood City, California, and an additional office in New York. The firm provided software as a service (SaaS) for web sites to measure and influence user behaviour using techniques such as gamification.
BranchOut was a Facebook application designed for finding jobs, networking professionally, and recruiting employees. It was founded by Rick Marini in July 2010, and was, as of March 2012, the largest professional networking service on Facebook. The company sold its assets to HR Software Company 1-Page in November 2014 and the staff was picked up by Hearst.
PlayerScale, Inc. is a Belmont-based gaming infrastructure provider. As of 23 May 2013 it operates as a subsidiary of Yahoo!, but it is still functioning as a stand-alone business unit.
Storm8 Inc. is a mobile social game developer founded in 2009 by former Zynga designer, Garrett J. Remes, as well as former Facebook engineers, including Perry Tam, William Siu, Chak Ming Li, and Laura Yip in Redwood Shores, California. Notable games include the Restaurant Story franchise, Dragon Story, Bubble Mania, Fantasy Forest Story, Castle Story and iMobsters.
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