Friday Funding Roundup 641648

Media and cheap talk earn their keep in this week's VC roundup.

PlayPhone: This mobile entertainment content delivery startup from San Jose, Calif., has grabbed $18.75 million in Series C funding led by Scale Venture Partners and joined by prior investors.

The four-year-old company has developed a system for pumping content like games, ringtones, and wallpaper to user's cellphones. PlayPhone sells content via its mobile portal at PlayPhone.com, and operates similar sites for media and entertainment brands, such as Sega, ABC, Bandai, Lycos Inc. and RealNetworks Inc. (Nasdaq: RNWK)

PlayPhone says it will use this money to expand into more international markets this year. The firm has raised close to $30 million overall.

Intercasting Corp.: This San Diego company is attempting to set some standards for carriers on the wild, untamed frontier of wireless social networking. In three years, it has gathered up an impressive partner list including AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T), Verizon Wireless , and Virgin Mobile USA Inc. (NYSE: VM).

Venrock Associates led the firm's $12 million Series B round, which was joined by prior investors. The firm has snagged $17.5 million in funding in total.

Intercasting says it will use the money to expand carrier-based distribution and partners for both its mobile social networking application -- Rabble -- and its Social Networking Service Gateway (SNS-G) Anthem Platform, which offers carriers a standard interface for technical integration, content policy management, and transaction processing for social networking applications.

Mig33: Funny how the promise of cheap VOIP and text messages seems to attract the big bucks. Some might call it the "Skype effect."

This week's lucky recipient is Australian mobile VOIP and text service mig33, which claims to have signed on more than four million users in 200 countries since launching at the end of 2005. The firm's parent company, Project Goth, has just closed a Series A funding round of $10 million co-led by Accel Partners and Redpoint Ventures , with a "substantial contribution" from Technology Venture Partners LP .

The company plans to expand its offering to the U.S. and other countries in the coming months. [Ed note: Might want to consider changing the name to something less redolent of cold war dog-fights, but that's just us.]

— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Unstrung