You’d think Twitter cofounder and Square CEO Jack Dorsey would be a whiz at social media. But his posts to Twitter’s young video-sharing service Vine are a mix of weirdly creepy and just-plain-boring clips.

Vine launched in January and carries an official description in the iOS app store as “the best way to see and share life in motion.” The app appears to have had a profound effect on Dorsey.

Back in late April, Dorsey admitted that he has a hard time simply taking pictures anymore and thinks Vine’s 6-second videos have changed how he sees art. He said: “I think it’s an entirely new art form, and I think it’s amazing — every picture I look at right now, I want it to move; I’m waiting for it to move. Where’s the sound?”

But Dorsey doesn’t appear to know what’s worth capturing in motion, and sometimes he’s being downright creepy.

I’ll be the first admit that I’m not that great at Vine. We all can’t be majestic Vine artists. But I don’t post Vines often, and I certainly don’t spam my Twitter followers with Vine videos because I’m bored.

For example, just today Dorsey has posted three relatively dull Vines from the same plane window:

A cursory look through Dorsey’s other Vine videos isn’t much better. Often he takes Vines where a picture would have been sufficient. Instead of a snapshot of a moment, we’re subjected to 6 seconds of some ho-hum event.

Here’s Dorsey standing in a line:

Here’s Dorsey showing off the “energy” of the Square NY office:

Here’s Dorsey looking at a street in Manhattan:

Here’s Dorsey looking at some “street art”:

Here’s Dorsey in a cab:

And then there are these creepy Vines, where Dorsey looks into the camera and captures other people behind him:

Occasionally, Dorsey does use Vine in a way that goes with the spirit of the service.

It’d be nice to see Dorsey post more Vines like these. We’re wishing you luck, Jack.

Top screenshot via Jack Dorsey/Vine

July 9-10, 2013
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A new service called Vinepeek is giving you an in-the-moment look at what people are recording and posting to Twitter’s new video-sharing mobile app Vine.

Twitter released Vine on Thursday, making it possible for anyone to share those short and sweet bits of content in a whole new medium: video. You can upload up to six seconds of video content that will be played in a loop. You can cut up your content to show, for example, a beer being consumed, or a person running to a finish line. The technology was created by a company called Vine, which Twitter acquired before the product was ever launched.

Now, as more people start to use the app, Vinepeek will let you see each video as it is uploaded in real time. It was a “Friday project” created by folks from PXi Ventures, a London tech incubator, according to the website. PXi recommends that you use Vinepeek on a desktop, and cautions that you might see a Vine twice.

As Mashable points out, this is similar to a service called This Is Now, which shows you Instagram photos from all over the world, uploaded while you watch.

Now, go enjoy a little Saturday life-procrastination.

hat tip Mashable; Image created by Meghan Kelly with screenshots from Vine

July 9-10, 2013
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Popular social video chat app ooVoo has added a new feature called “Watch Together” that lets up to 11 people watch a YouTube video and video chat at the same time.

New York City-based ooVoo claims to have more than 70 million registered users, and comScore estimates the service has 25 million monthly active users. Just a few months ago, it said it was adding 1 million users every two weeks. About 65 percent of the apps’ are under 25 years old.

ooVoo President Jay Samit told me Watch Together was the app’s most requested feature among its young audience was the ability, and something that Google+ has offered with its Hangouts feature for quite some time. The big difference? Hangouts only lets you watch a video with nine of your friends while ooVoo bumps that up to 10. ooVoo also lets up to 12 people video chat at the same time, so the the app replaces one of the people with the video. It sounds like fun because you can see the reactions of your friends or family while you watch videos.

“Watch Together was the most requested feature by our users,” Samit said. “You can laugh together and share together. It’s as simple as that.”

The Watch Together feature also allows users to search for YouTube videos inside ooVoo video chat or let any chat member change the video or adjust playback. It also displays trending YouTube videos and popular videos among ooVoo users for easier selection.

Watch Together will be “available initially” for users of ooVoo’s Windows client. It will likely come later for Mac, iOS, and Android versions of ooVoo.

You know what they say about how knowledge is power? Mobile analytics firm Flurry knows everything about everybody who uses mobile apps. It keeps tabs on app usage on about 700 million mobile devices every month.

The San Francisco company has parlayed that knowledge into services that advertise games and apps to the users who really want them. And that’s why Flurry has just raised $25 million in a fourth round of funding led by Crosslink Capital. The funding brings the company’s total amount raised to $51.6 million. The number of users that Flurry measures has grown 47 months in a row, said Simon Khalaf, chief executive of Flurry, in an interview with GamesBeat.

Just about anyone who has an app uses Flurry to measure how it gets used. Over the past year, Flurry has quadrupled the number of data points it measures to over 32 billion per day. Each day, the company measures 1.9 billion app user sessions across more than 250 million devices. Flurry tracks 250,000 apps, up from 120,000 a year ago. About 80,000 companies use Flurry across iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and other platforms. From that data, Khalaf (pictured above) says he knows that media entertainment, especially on tablets, is starting to become huge on mobile devices, in addition to games and other apps.

Flurry makes money by using its data to recommend apps to users based on what they already have on their phones and how much they use certain apps. Flurry’s AppCircle ad network advertises apps for targeted users. Over the past year, AppCircle has grown its volume three-fold and helped Flurry become cash-flow positive. AppCircle now delivers more than 120 million monthly ad conversions  (the number of times when a user installs an app based on a Flurry ad).

These ad services are generating a lot of money for developers, Khalaf said. The average revenue per daily active user is rising. If an app reaches 100,000 users, it can start to generate real numbers that can support a small company, Khalaf said.

“There is a real long tail now,” he said.

Nick Mignano, a partner at Crosslink Capital, will join Flurry’s board. Other investors included Menlo Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, InterWest Partners, Union Square Ventures, First Round Capital, and Draper Richards.

“Flurry is powering a new wave of digital advertising with big data for the mobile app economy in an exciting way,” said Mignano.  “The scale at which the company is operating in terms of data volume, ad serving, and revenue generation impressed our team.  This enables one of the most exciting uses of data for business customers since our private investment in Omniture in 2006.”

Khalaf said that Flurry wasn’t considering raising money since it had $9 million in the bank and was already profitable. But the in-bound demand to invest in Flurry was strong, and the board decided to take advantage of it, Khalaf said.

“We had so much in-bound interest that we change our minds,” he said. “The good thing is that Flurry is what it was and is what it wants to be. We have done phenomenal with mobile analytics.”

Rivals include Google Analytics, Kontagent, Swrve, and others. In ad services, Flurry competes with ad networks like Tapjoy. Flurry will use the money to accelerate its newly introduced AppSpot supply-side platform and other products. Khalaf said that Flurry has 110 employees.

“Analytics and AppCircle will continue to grow,” Khalaf. “We add more to our platform.”

Flurry faces the occasional risk of angering platform owners such as Apple. A while back, it discovered new devices operating out of Apple’s headquarters, and it unmasked the original iPad. Apple got pretty angry about that. But by and large, relations with platform owners are good, Khalaf said.

“Apple is a rational company,” he said.

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July 9-10, 2013
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Keek has eked out an additional $7 million in funding to support the promising growth of its web and mobile service for sharing 36-second video clips.

Keek plays in the crowded but still nebulous sandbox of services betting that mobile users will soon trade in photo sharing for video posting. The social network encourages users to post short video updates, called “keeks” and follow or subscribe to the updates of other users.

The Toronto-based company, founded in 2011, released its video-sharing apps for iOS and Android in March. Keek users have created a total of 6.4 million videos to date, but are now posting 66,000 videos per day. In August, Keek racked up 21 million visits and 250 million pageviews.

“We are committed to delivering the fastest, most engaging social video experience,” Keek CEO Isaac Raichyk said in a statement. “This new funding will allow us to keep the momentum going, accelerate product development, scale the infrastructure, and expand globally.”

Keek’s latest round was led by Cranson Capital Securities, and included participation from Pinetree Capital and Whitecap Venture Partners. The startup has raised more than $12 million to date.

Photo credit: Chris JL/Flickr

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Software company Autodesk has agreed to buy quickly growing video app Socialcam for $60 million, the company announced Tuesday.

Socialcam, along with video sharing rivals Viddy and Klip, aims to be the next “Instagram for video,” but the startup’s buy offer is considerably less than the $1 billion Facebook paid for Instagram. That said, Socialcam launched just 18 months ago as a part of Justin.tv, and then split into its own organization last August. $60 million for 18 months of hard work isn’t too shabby.

“Socialcam shares Autodesk’s mission of helping everybody imagine, design, and create a better world,” said Socialcam CEO and founder Michael Seibel, in a statement. “Autodesk has a proven track record of acquiring and scaling fast-growing, early stage consumer businesses while staying true to their core audience and vision. With products like Pixlr, SketchBook and 123D, Autodesk is empowering creativity in millions around the world by making their award-winning technology accessible to everybody. We’re excited to join them and introduce this global community to simple video creation, editing, and sharing.”

Socialcam is currently the most popular application on Facebook, with about 54.7 million monthly active users, with TripAdvisor and Yahoo Social Bar in second and third. While Socialcam has that coveted No. 1 spot, its active number of users is now trending down, which might explain why Autodesk offered just $60 million. However, social video apps overall do appear to be rising in popularity and could become a problem for YouTube.

Photo credit: Socialcam