SchoolFeed helps users find out whatever happened to their freshman crush, of course — as well as plan reunions, scan their yearbooks and play games together. It also uses a lot of the standard viral persuasion techniques from Facebook social gaming apps, like rewarding users with virtual coins and gifts, and constantly urging them to add and share with their friends.

Instead of mining school directories, the company reverse-engineers high school class lists by getting its users to contribute their Facebook data. In my experience, the app seems to automatically include all your Facebook friends, regardless of what high school they say they went to.

Former RockYou CEO Lance Tokuda founded schoolFeed last year and is conducting a sort of RockYou class reunion of his own, having recruited former RockYou employees and RockYou investors like First Round Capital, SK Telecom and Nicolas El Baze of Partech. (Crosslink Capital and InterWest invested, as well.)

SchoolFeed really does look and feel like a cross between Classmates.com and a Zynga-style game. Tokuda pointed out that Classmates still makes significant revenue in the age of Facebook. But where Classmates charges its users, schoolFeed plans to monetize through ads and virtual goods. Its first in-app game is Bingo.

Speaking of Bingo, Tokuda told us he’s hoping to attract a relatively older audience with SchoolFeed. That’s in part because Facebook itself already serves as a sort of living yearbook for many younger people.

“We’re targeting people age 36 and older, who graduated before the Internet was born,” Tokuda said.

Yet another Web 2.0 wunderkind got itself more shelter from the economic storm–widget maker RockYou announced today that it has nabbed a $17 million investment from two Asian firms, SoftBank Group and SK Telecom Ventures.

The investment will be added to $35 million from the Redwood City, Calif.-based start-up’s C round in June. Overall, RockYou has raised a total of $67 million from investors, including DCM, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Partech International and Sequoia Capital.

It is unclear if the company’s valuation is at the previous $400 million level or not.

In a video interview with BoomTown on Friday (see below), the company’s co-founders, CEO Lance Tokuda and CTO Jia Shen, said the money would be used to expand into the Asia-Pacific market, including onto Xiaonei, one of China’s largest social-networking sites.

As part of the investment, SoftBank–which has major Web investments all over Asia–and RockYou, the company said in a press release, “will also set up a new joint venture company that will develop widget and application products and services for use on PCs and mobile devices in the Asian market, in particular the Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Chinese markets.”

Well, that’s a horse of a different color, what with most Web 2.0 outfits pulling in their horns of late.

Indeed, RockYou said it would also use the money to open offices in New York, Los Angeles and Detroit and look at making some opportunistic acquisitions, as well as adding to its advertising sales force and developing more brand and vertical channels.

The company’s NYC sales office, previously a one-man shop, is expanding, adds MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka. It hired two people since August and still has one position open and plenty of applicants, says sales boss Paul van de Kamp.

Why all the frenetic activity from RockYou, which says it had over 100 million monthly uniques with over eight billion page views from its popular third-party applications like Super Wall?

Well, a few good reasons, such as: the need to keep up with its key competitor, Slide, which raised its own huge war chest; to find new audiences away from the two top social-networking site, Facebook and MySpace, from which it gets most of its traffic; to improve its products, in order to get better ad rates; and, most of all, to weather the current econalypse in the ad sector.

While RockYou’s execs believe the ad market for widgets and social networking is on the rise in comparison to other kinds of media, it will still be a glum outlook for everyone for a while.

Tokuda and Shen talk about that, as well as the investment, in the video here, and below that is a video I did a year ago with the pair:

Our quest was to find out what some savvy Web 2.0 types thought would–or should–happen next in the Microsoft (MSFT)-Yahoo (YHOO) takeover battle, following Yahoo’s earnings report yesterday.

Thus, we made the scene–at widgetmaker RockYou’s “Rockin’ Spring Mixer” at Bong Su and news site Digg’s get-together at Mighty–to get some advice on what’s going to happen next.

Frankly, BoomTown is running low on ideas and we got a good range of predictions to bolster our bare cupboard.

So here’s a good mix of interviews on the topic, with folks such as RockYou CEO Lance Tokuda, Broadband Mechanics’ Marc Canter, Digg Founder Kevin Rose (in the very, very dark and noisy club–sorry!–but you can hear him at least), Digg CEO Jay Adelson and others.

And, at the end of the video, using a dinosaur toy as a metaphor, Louie and Alex Swisher, who pretty much have the situation down cold.

Here’s the video:

RockYou, widget maker, is the latest example of a sane valuation heartbreaker, as it is undertaking efforts to secure an investment from mainstream financing firms that would value the company at between $300 million and $400 million.

First reported by Valleywag last night, the start-up, said one source, “is being squired around Wall Street” by investment behemoth Morgan Stanley (MS), in search of the same kind of deal its rival Slide got in January.

BoomTown broke the news of that deal, which nabbed Slide $50 million and a $550 million valuation with investments from blue-chip investors T. Rowe Price (TROW) and Fidelity.

Thus, RockYou’s motto: Anything Slide can do, we can do slightly smaller!

And, indeed, not to be SuperPoked by Slide CEO and Founder Max Levchin, sources said RockYou Co-Founders Jai Shen (also CTO) and Lance Tokuda (CEO) were quickly on the march for their own payday.

It is, in fact, a quest that a lot of Web 2.0 companies seem to be on, since the sector’s fearless leader–Facebook–got its $240 million and $15 billion valuation from Microsoft (MSFT) last year.

All of this frantic funding activity is, of course, this bubble’s version of going public–grab big cash investments from investment firms and hedge funds, desperate for a good bet on the sector, without the pain of public scrutiny of questionable business prospects that did in Web 1.0 shooting stars.

It’s that or get bought for an ungodly sum by equally desperate Web 1.0 companies (See: AOL+Bebo).

Sources close to RockYou, which has had acquisition feelers put out to it from larger companies in the past, said the company has had several strong offers of funding, but it is trying to select the right partners for the latest round of funding.

“We want our investors to be strategic and helpful to the company,” said one person close to RockYou.

RockYou has so far been funded by Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Partech International.

(Interestingly, Sequoia backs another instant messaging and chat widget maker, Meebo, which is reportedly seeking a $250 million valuation, which I posted about here yesterday).

To be fair, makers of highly distributed third-party apps like RockYou are garnering immense traffic and their widgets are syndicated everywhere. RockYou’s Super Wall, which lets you turbocharge your digital wall, for example, is one of the most popular on Facebook.

Other RockYou apps include: X Me, a communications tool that allows you to “Hug Her, Slap Him, Tickle Them!”; and Likeness, where you can “compare yourself with friends and movie stars like Angelina Jolie, Jessica Alba, Keira Knightley and many more.”

The company has been trying to monetize all this traffic and popularity and distribution, as well as knowledge of user behavior, by offering advertisers new forms of engagement.

But the jury is still out on these interesting but unproven efforts by all the social-networking players.

In any case, the money is apparently still flowing into these start-ups, taking a chance on them being the next big media play.

Here are two videos I made when I visited RockYou’s offices in San Mateo, Calif., last October, after I had called the widget market juvenile and faddish.

The first is my tour of the office, where I was playfully accosted by an infant–oops, a RockYou engineer–in a suit. The second is my interview with Shen and Tokuda.

So I recently ventured into the heart of the empire of toddler developers with a visit to the San Mateo, Calif., HQ of RockYou, the super-popular maker of third-party apps on hot social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

I have been on a bit of a grumpy tear of late about the juvenile nature of these widgets, whose use has taken off explosively, as the sites they live on have grown.

I have felt that most of them have been a bit silly, useless and faddish, rather than long-lasting and relevant.

RockYou’s apps, for example, include: Super Wall, with 1.26 million active daily users on Facebook, which allows you to turbocharge your basic posting wall; X Me, a communications app with 706,000 Facebook users, which allows you to “Hug Her, Slap Him, Tickle Them!”; and Likeness, where you can “compare yourself with friends and movie stars like Angelina Jolie, Jessica Alba, Keira Knightley and many more,” which has 611,000 active Facebook users.

Like another widget maker, Slide (I did a post and video on Slide here, as well as a three-part interview with founder Max Levchin too), the start-up has big VC backing. In RockYou’s case, it is funded by Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Partech International.

Of course, there are the rumors of big-money buyouts and even IPOs for these developers.

I am not so sure this is a good thing, but I do also believe there is something important going on with companies like RockYou, which could become akin to the major software makers of the past era. If, of course, they grow up a bit first.

Here’s my video of a visit to their office (and here is an accompanying interview with its co-founders Lance Tokuda and Jia Shen), where one employee jokingly played dress-up just like an adult, sporting a suit and tie just for me.

Oh, those crazy kids!

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!

Why? Apparently because inane is the goal! Well then, I guess: Mission accomplished!

At an appearance at the Web 2.0 Summit yesterday, a group on a panel called “Facebook as a Platform,” led by Dave McClure, talked about a lot of stuff.

But it seemed to get lively when the discussion turned to my comparison of the boom in third party apps on Facebook to the arrival in my home of a box of shiny plastic toys from China.

I was at home with my own actual 2-year-old playing a rousing game of hit-mama-with-the-foam-finger- and-crack-up-hysterically, when the group–which included Seth Goldstein of SocialMedia, Ali Partovi of iLike, Keith Rabois of Slide and Lance Tokuda of RockYou–declared me humorless.

All because I did not realize that these apps were meant to be silly and more fun than a barrel of monkeys.

Actually, I did know that and, by the way, monkeys are much more fun.

Here was my initial argument:

But, so far, as popular as those apps have become, what [Facebook founder Mark] Zuckerberg and the widget-makers have wrought is mostly silly, useless and time-wasting and the kazillion users of these widgets are pretty much just acting like little children.

“I never thought I would call the often frivolous AOL back in the day–very simply, a Neanderthal version of Facebook–a mature offering in comparison.

“While I will admit when I am not chewing nails that a lot of these apps are somewhat fun, I can’t help but ask myself that lyric from the old Peggy Lee classic: ‘Is that all there is?’

“And if that is all there is, can Facebook really build a viable and long-lasting business on what is essentially a bunch of games that will ultimately become wearying for users? Doesn’t it need more robust apps that actually are useful and relevant and make Facebook the service that Zuckerberg has often told me was a ‘utility’?

“While Facebook–with a cleaner and more strict look and a better navigation–is surely less goofy than rival MySpace for anyone over 12 years old, and its video, photo and email features are nice, the vast majority of its apps are still mostly as dumb as a box of hammers.”

“Kara’s argument is ridiculous,” said Slide’s Rabois, according to a report on Wired.com.

“Why do people watch movies and TV? Because they’re bored or looking for something to do to relieve stress in their lives. Apps are providing entertainment to users.”

Really, Keith? I had no idea, despite the fact that “Gilligan’s Island” was my favorite show for way too many years!

Seriously, I know what he is saying and I agree on the need for some fun on this tragic little spinning globe of ours, except:

1. I would be fine with silly widgets, if there were more serious ones too, well beyond Vampires and SuperPokes and even an app called Pop Ur Zit. All of these have the longevity of a gnat, designed to be faddish and quickly forgotten. And, if you are going to be fun, one might try a little harder to come up with some offerings that are a little less disposable.

In fact, on a recent visit I made to RockYou HQ (post coming Monday), its savvy tech lead noted that there was surely a limit to how much crap people wanted to throw at each other.

2. Entertainment, especially the idiotic kind, will not get you to massive sustained usage that characterizes a true paradigm shift that McClure claimed was happening.

For example, was it all the games that made the personal computer become a ubiquitous device? No, it was serious programs like VisiCalc and Lotus 1-2-3.

So where are those kind of apps for systems like Facebook, I wonder, as I noted in another post about what to do with a group of 2,500 techies I have gathered on the social-networking site. So far, we have a whole lot of nothing to offer them.

3. Another argument made on the panel was that the blogosphere used to be disdained as goofy only a few years ago and now it is a true media power.

Well, it was never disdained by me and, actually, there were a lot of substantive and important blogs even back then to balance out the fluffier ones. In fact, there were more.

4. As RockYou’s Tokuda said, referring to me: “I believe for her the apps are useless because she’s not a teenage girl.”

This is not a news flash, although I probably am one of the older diehard fans of “Hannah Montana.”

But it is not necessarily true that advertisers will flock to these widgets, just because the kids love it.

Because as much as advertisers want to reach a younger demographic, they also do not want to do it in an environment of frivolous engagement and I doubt there is much appeal to them when people are busy slapping each other digitally or cartoonifying their friends. In addition, advertisers want to reach people who will buy things and few are in that mindset when they are anonymously telling someone else the “honest” truth or being a Human Pet.

I could go on, but will stop there, so the Lollipop Guild can respond in crayon.

But here’s one offer I will take RockYou’s Tokuda up on: A promise he made onstage to build something just for me.

Just some guidance, Lance: No poking, slapping, tickling or zit-picking.

Call me old-fashioned, because I know you will anyway.