Kara Interviews RockYou Co-Founders Jia Shen and Lance Tokuda

October 22, 2007 at 8:59 am PT

When I paid a visit to the offices of RockYou in San Mateo, Calif., recently (see my other video of the office tour here), I interviewed its co-founders CTO Jia Shen and CEO Lance Tokuda.

Here’s my chat with the pair who helm one of the top developers of third-party applications for trendy social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

I have been attacking such widgets of late for being too faddish and infantile, which we discuss here, as well the trends to come in the fast-moving space.

Onstage at the Web 2.0 Summit last week, after a widget-maker panel he was on slapped BoomTown around a bit, Tokuda offered to make a special app for AllThingsD.com. In this video, his suggestion involves Walt Mossberg and digital cameras being tossed in his direction.

I say: Bring it on!

Tagged with: app, BoomTown, digital, Facebook, Internet, Jia Shen, Kara Swisher, Lance Tokuda, Myspace, RockYou, social networking, widget

comments so far. Add yours.

George Meredith

Sorry, but what was the point of that video? You just mocked everyone there for 3 min. You came off really immature, much more than the hardworking 20yr olds at RockYou. I didn’t get what the point was at all. You spent most of the video trying to make fun of the kid wearing the suit, why? You could have done something insightful at least…
George Meredith

wrong video…
http://www.stanleywong.org/ Stanley Wong

Jia had the most insightful comment about how these basic games on Facebook are going to evolve along the lines of virtual gaming. Especially his comment about Facebook (& others) eventually creating a virtual payment system. I’m sure this will unlock micropayments for different things.
http://kara.allthingsd.com Kara Swisher

The besuited kid was a joke, aimed at me, which you might have thought funny if you read this blog.

But sorry for being unfunny to you.
http://kara.allthingsd.com Kara Swisher

Yes, for all the hard time I give these widget makers, I think Jia is one of the most forward thinking developers out there.
Madhavan Thirumalai

Great questions Kara, I chuckled through out – Is this stuff really useful? And will the kids continue to use that cool new wideget for more than 15 minutes.

It sounded like the Rockyou founders had given some thought to apps beyond walls. One of them talked about making apps that would be useful as the facebook crowd grew older.

I suspect they were not tellng you everything.