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.

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YouTube for dance videos DanceJam has launched into open beta today after several months of private testing.

DanceJam offers dance battles where users dance off against each other, with viewers voting on the best video. DanceJam also offers general dance videos, including locally uploaded content and videos from external sites such YouTube.

DanceJam was founded by M.C. Hammer, and Geoffrey Arone and Anthony Young from Flock. The company has taken $4.5 million in funding over two rounds, with investors including Ron Conway, Alex Algard, Michael Tanne, Geoff Ralston, Alex Welch, Ariel Poler, Rustic Canyon Partners, Softbank Capital and Michael Arrington.

You can see an example of a “Dance Jam” here.

Disclosure: Michael (as noted in the post) is an investor, I’m not.

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Put new startup DanceJam, a “YouTube for dance videos” down for another $3.5 million, bringing their total to $4.5 million raised. They’ve closed a Series B round of financing from Softbank Capital, Rustic Canyon Partners and a number of new angel investors. Note that I am an investor in this startup.

The company, founded by M.C. Hammer and Flock’s Geoffrey Arone and Anthony Young, is in private beta but should be launching shortly. Users will be able to upload short clips of themselves dancing; other users can rate those clips. Aggregate votes will be used to show top dancers by geography and dance type around the the country and the world.

In addition to the funding and the upcoming public launch, the company says they’ve signed a number of key business development deals to assist with distribution and marketing.

Wired Magazine wrote a good overview of the company here.

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I wrote about DanceJam last week, disclosing that I was an investor and saying I’d be linking to other coverage of the startup. Wired just posted a good overview of the company, which was founded by M.C. Hammer, Geoffrey Arone and Anthony Young.

In the article they mention an issue that has been bugging me - that some people have suggested that we only included MC Hammer as an expert panelist at the TechCrunch40 conference because of his race, or because I invested in his startup.

That is just completely ridiculous and untrue. First of all, we were lucky to have someone with Hammer’s background to help fill out the panel. He’s intelligent and has been through a lot of ups and downs in his career - giving him wisdom. He is also clearly more connected to America’s youth than any other person who attended the event.

And he handled himself brilliantly. At one point I remember seeing the other panelists shaking their head in agreement when Hammer made a comment on stage. Clearly he deserved to be there as much as any other expert, and we really needed his point of view on the startups that launched.

So in fact Hammer did two favors for me - agreeing to spend time at our conference, and letting me invest in his new startup. I think DanceJam is great (obviously, since I put money behind it). In fact, it would have almost certainly been one of the forty presenting startups if not for the conflict of interest.

Eliot Van Buskirk, who wrote the Wired article, agrees:

After TechCrunch announced that Hammer would be part of the expert panel at the TechCrunch20 conference in September, Valleywag speculated that TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington included Hammer because of his race. Then, when details surfaced that Arrington is an investor in DanceJam, allegations of nepotism were leveled at the TechCrunch founder.

The nepotism issue seems to have blown over, and as was obvious during our meeting, Hammer is no mere figurehead.

Hopefully next year when we begin to announce our experts for the next TechCrunch40, people will be a little more circumspect before trashing people who we invite who don’t quite fit the mold of “web 2.0 guru.” Our only goal is to put on an entertaining and educational show, and we’re not going to stop inviting people who help us achieve those goals.

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DanceJam, founded by M.C. Hammer, Geoffrey Arone and Anthony Young (Arone and Young come out of Flock), is opening its doors to a select few beta testers this afternoon. This is a company that I have personally invested in, so I won’t editorialize much here (I will be linking to other blogs and news sources who cover it, though).

The site, which has already had some mainstream news coverage, will be a place for users to upload videos of themselves dancing. Viewers can watch and rate the clips, and there will be a constant stream of “face-offs” between dancers to determine the top people in various dance types and locations.

In preparation for launch, the team has been traveling to various locations to film people dancing in casual settings. Much of this footage will be included as original content on the site. See the video below for some of it:

They are inviting a few people who’ve added their emails to the DanceJam home page. We are also giving away 100 invites right now - just email techcrunch@dancejam.com. The first 100 to email get in.

DanceJam has raised $1 million in angel funding from investors including Rustic Canyon, Ron Conway, Michael Arrington, Alex Algard, Michael Tanne, Geoff Ralston, Alex Welch and Ariel Poler.

Please see our About page for a full list of my conflicts.

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Three TechCrunch40 demo pit startups got local bay area television coverage last week - Dancejam (note: I’m an investor), Realius and Gizmoz. It looks like the reporter did the easy thing - a swing by the demo pit to film the best looking startups. Congrats to all three.

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