DanceJam, a dance-focused social network that launched in March, has announced several major partnerships and features today. (Disclosure: Michael Arrington is an investor).
The first partnership, with Weezer, is being promoted by Judson Laipply, the guy we’ve all seen dancing in that Evolution of Dance video. Dancers can submit videos that show unique and easy to learn dance routines on DanceJam to be considered for the contest. One winner will win a pair of tickets to the Weezer show of their choice, and $500 cash.
DanceJam has also partnered with Janet Jackson to host online auditions for her upcoming reality show. Janet Jackson and choreographer Gil Duldulao will be looking for singers and dancers to submit their audition videos on the site.
The site also has a new tournament feature, where users can enter and vote on tournament brackets for things like “Best Choreography.” Several more features are in the works, like the ability to search for cities, groups, and events.
DanceJam was founded by M.C. Hammer and Flock’s Geoffrey Arone and Anthony Young. They have raised to date $4.5 million through two rounds from Softbank Capital, Rustic Canyon Partners, and several angel investors.
More like… (Disclosure: Mike blew like $100k(or w/e the amount is) because MC Hammer asked him to)
Congrats Mike on getting some nice publicity for your site… these are some big names!
Jon
Cannot believe Arrington invested in this one.
I put the Weezer promo together with Dancejam - thanks Nalin and Rachel - and I’d love to see Michael’s entry into the contest. Might prove why he invested cash instead of time. I’d even give Techcrunch a pair of tickets if he doesn’t win.
DanceJam is doing a lot better than I thought it would…
The site is fun and dance is huge. I love Weezer!
Wow, this is actually pretty cool.
Congrats DanceJam team!
@5: Dancejam is doing better than you thought? Compete has traffic at 24K, Quantcast has traffic at 10K. That’s doing well?
$4.5M in VC money and they’re not even breaking 25K users a month…sounds like a waste of money to me.
This is actually *really* cool, this is probably the only thing from techcrunch I forwarded to my girlfriend AND my 16 year old cousins.
@8: Um, sure they are not tearing it up yet, but quoting Compete and Quantcast isn’t exactly a strong argument. At least you had the decency not to mention Alexa! Also, the site has only been around for a few months, get over it.
Dance is clearly a *HUGE* market opportunity… just check out all the primetime TV programs that focus on it. Crap, I can’t turn on MTV these days without seeing a Dance show, and while I have NO rhythm, I still enjoy watching the shows. And given that I know Geoffrey and Anthony, if there is one group of people that have a shot at taking the consumer obsession around dance and having it work online it is these guys. I was am actually really excited by the new tournament feature… I think it has a chance to really draw more killer content to the site and more people watching.
I think the site actually has a lot of promise. Its user base is currently underserved and dance is really popular these days. I can’t even count how many dance-based TV shows are on right now.
(Disclosure: Michael Arrington is an investor).
No wonder you cover garbage, you invest in it.
Little out of touch with marketing. MC hammer, Janet Jackon?!?. I don’t think you could find more worse hasbeens (with the core audience) ’stars’ to promote your site… Deadpool……Or whoever investing the big money…
Maybe if they promoted an ebook with dance moves that would be something, but their time in pop and even after-pop-culture(think VH1) is long gone.
Why are you even covering DanceJam? It’s a failure of epic proportions and highlights how clueless Arrington is at business.
This must be one of the worst designed commercial site i have ever seen,my 11 year old daughter could do better.
I think they ought to invest some of that 4.5mil in a design team very quickly or have they blew it on parties ????
I think DanceJam isn’t that bad - it’s starting out, but I think it has a place in one of the “internets”. Recently it was included in a report about the 10 Most Gratuitous Celebrity Social Networks. Out of the 10, I think it’s the less gratuitous, comparing it to 50 Cent’s social network.
Man, there are a lot of trolls commenting on TC lately…starting to sound like Slashdot here. There are a million virtual worlds where people just walk around like automatons, or social bookmarking services that get no traction, and people are much less critical of those investments. However, one of the world’s most recognized names in dance builds a pretty nice site around dance and people pounce. DanceJam is not my thing quite frankly, but the site is actually very well designed and has some great content. If the trolls are so upset that these guys managed to raise some money, why not go out and try to get your idea funded and stop whining on TC!
Lucky DanceJam!
All this TechCrunch coverage yet still no Comscore data!
Or even Compete:
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/dancejam.com/