VentureBeat

UStream.TV, a live video-streaming application, has raised $11.1 million in a first round of funding from venture capital firm DCM, as well as previous investors Labrador Ventures and The Band of Angels.

Since its launch in March of last year, the broadcasting platform says it has had more than 260,000 broadcasters, 2 million viewer hours per month, 2.2 million unique visitors per month, and 400-600 streams at any given moment. It claims to have grown 325 percent over the course of the last six months

Users with a web-cam and an internet connection can stream via browser to any user across the web, including an embeddable widget for personal blogs, websites, and social networking accounts. Ustream, like some of its competitors, lets users download files in a variety of video formats, like .FLV, .WMV, .MP4 and .MOV. This way, users can upload syndicate their videos on the many video-sharing sites out there. Check out the sample, above.

The Los-Altos, Cali.-based company has had a wide range of celebrities and politicians use its services from Senators Obama and McCain, to artists Chris Brown and The Plain White T’s, and counts Bebo, Veoh, Digg, Meebo, Sun, and the Republication National Convention as past and current partners.

The video-streaming market is heating up, as competitor Qik’s parent company Visivo Communications raised $3 million to expand the mobile streaming app, and Yahoo announced its own video-streaming service.

And with more than 14 competitors ranging from Justin.tv to Kyte and Mogulus to Flixwagon, it is far from clear which company will emerge as the dominant leader in video-streaming, but UStream.Tv now has a significant cash advantage over its rivals.

In early February, rumors swirled that UStream.Tv was facing acquisition talks with Microsoft, but were never confirmed or denied as the company chose to raise money instead.

Covestor, an investing community site, has raised $6.5 million in its second round of funding. The London and New York-based company plans to build out its asset management platform, which helps its users make investment decisions.

Covestor targets both average investors and professional fund managers. The site mines information from real portfolios on online stock brokerages, giving a holistic view of different risk levels and investment strategies. In all, it tracks 150 variables

The fund management platform is what Chief Executive Rikki Tahta believes can allow the average user to make better decisions than the pros. Tahta has compared Covestor.com to Facebook, in that it wants to bring a sense of trust and real-world verification to the online social investing community that is missing in other investment sites.

The site claims the number of ‘money managers’ it hosts is ten times the number of managers that work for any single professional firm in the world, including giants like UBS or Goldman Sachs, whose consumer investing divisions Tahta thinks are in direct competition with his company.

Covestor’s business model is a bit less certain: The company plans to let fund managers earn revenue by charging minimal fees to the investors who follow them, just as real fund and hedge fund managers do, while the company will keep a portion for itself.

Well known venture capitalist and blogger Fred Wilson, who happens to be an investor in Covestor through his firm Union Square Ventures, writes that social platforms such as Covestor “might be the best option for investors looking to generate outperformance in the market.” He shares his stock portfolio performance (not good; see left).

While Wilson has put his proverbial money where his mouth is, whether Covestor can separate from the growing field of social investment sites including Zecco and Cake Financial remains to be seen. Back in February, we made up a list of 11 contenders for the social investing market.

Union Square Ventures, New York-based Spark Capital, and European firm Amadeus Capital all participated in the round, which will place Todd Dagres of Spark and Albert Wenger of USV on the Covestor board. USV participated in the first company’s first $1 million round of funding. The company is based in New York City.