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Today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York, Justin Bieber’s manager, Scooter Braun, talked about the megastar’s usage of Twitter. It was brilliant. “What other way is a teenage boy going to talk to girls?,” Braun quipped.

Bieber currently has around 2.7 million followers on Twitter, making him one of the most-followed people on the service. But more impressively, Bieber has seemed to dominate Twitter’s Trending Topics area lately. Or rather, he did. Then something happened. “Twitter, if you’re here. You changed your algorithm,” Braun half-joked.

Braun noted that for most of the tweets it is actually Bieber tweeting. In fact, Braun is the only other one with the password to the account — and those tweets are clearly not from Bieber. And of course Bieber is going to tweet for himself: “He’s talking to the 2 million girls has at his disposal,” Braun said.

More seriously, Braun said that the usage of Twitter is actually pretty important. It shows that he’s ”the same person who was talking to them before he got huge, is still talking to them now,” Braun noted.

He noted that there may be a random girl in Iowa who never thought she’d ever talk to Justin Bieber, then he responds to her on Twitter. “That’s something she’ll remember for the rest of her life.”

Bieber spends a least two hours a day on Twitter, Braun noted. “He likes doing it. That’s what kids do.”

Intel Capital is investing $10 million in TRA (which stands for ‘True ROI Accountability for Media’), a media planning, measurement and analytics software company. Funding for the investment comes from the $200 million Intel Capital Invest in America Technology Fund.

Intel’s capital injection is part of an $18.2 million Series C round, which includes participation from existing investors Arbitron and WPP.

TRA will use the funding for market expansion, data acquisition and to ramp up recruitment.

TRA provides a Web-based business intelligence platform called Media TRAnalytics, which enables advertisers, agencies and media organizations to enhance marketing accountability and measurement by matching 1.5 million households of TV data with 54 million households of purchase data for what it touts as the largest single-source database — 370,000 households.

In TV, TRA uses tuning data from set-top boxes, household purchase data from scanner cards and advertisers, and household demographic data. TRA’s ASP platform collects, measures, integrates, analyzes, and creates customized reports for each advertiser.

TRA’s database currently contains consumer packaged goods data, but the company says it will be loading additional purchase data in the future (such as pharmaceutical, automotive, consumer electronics and financial services purchase data).

The company was launched 2 years ago.

Today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York, Square co-founder (and Twitter creator) Jack Dorsey took the stage to demonstrate Square working on the iPhone. He also sat down with our own Michael Arrington and Erick Schonfeld to talk a bit about his success. And Dorsey had some advice for new entrepreneurs looking to raise money.

Mike noted that Dorsey is sort of a celebrity in the tech community now so raising money for Square was pretty easy. That’s true. Dorsey said that he took two weeks and scheduled 25 meetings in Silicon Valley and New York to talk to venture capitalists about Square. This resulted in Square being valued at $40 million before it even launched.

But Dorsey said his past success (with Twitter) was also a bit of a detriment. He wasn’t sure if people were actually interested in Square, or if they were just thinking about Twitter and his past success. It was important to him and his new co-founder that Square was the focal point.

Dorsey then went into a bit of history with the Twitter funding, and had some advice for new entrepreneurs: “You wanna see that engagement.”

What he means by that is that some of the early Twitter funding meetings were “terrible” because they weren’t questioned hard. The VCs didn’t really seem interested in the product or didn’t get it — so Twitter knew they weren’t the right fit.

The one who was? Fred Wilson, Dorsey took no time saying.

“Fred was one of the only people we saw that was a user of Twitter on a daily basis. 20 times a day in some cases,” Dorsey said. Mor e importantly, Wilson asked the tough questions about the long-term goals for the company. He wanted to know the product plan, he was agressive in his questioning, but he got it.

“I want someone on the board that will push the company in ways that I’m not thinking about. They need to guide us,” Dorsey said.

Another bit of advice: “Get something you can demo.”

Dorsey said that while most people go into VC meetings with a PowerPoint presentation, that should only be a back-up to what you’re presenting. Instead, you should show the site or the product. And it has to be something you’re proud of, he noted.

He said that they had been using Square for seven months on a day-to-day basis before they hit the road for the funding. They were ready. “We could go into a meeting and take money from someone,” Dorsey half-joked.

At TechCrunch Disrupt this morning Troy Carter, Founder & CEO, Coalition Media Group and worldwide Manager for pop star Lady Gaga sat down with Scooter Braun, Founder & Chair, SB Projects and worldwide Manager for fellow pop star Justin Bieber to discuss the digital era’s implications for musicians.

The hot topic of the conversation was YouTube and Twitter. Carter said openly that he and Lady Gaga “create music videos for YouTube.” Braun agreed with Carter, saying that Bieber represented a new strategy of creating a breakout teenage star. Braun said that previously teenage music stars has to have a show on Nickelodeon or Disney. But Bieber changed this; he was found on YouTube and his first videos singing Aretha Franklin’s Respect saw 55 million views by the time the artist signed a record deal with Universal Music. He ended up going Platinum shortly after.

Gaga originally broke out on YouTube and MySpace Music (which Braun was quick to say is dead), and Carter has now discovered a new star on YouTube, Grayson Chance. When asked about advertising, carter says that Lady Gaga’s videos include pre-roll and post-roll advertising (thanks to Vevo) but said that advertising isn’t a large revenue source. Record companies keep the bulk of the money made from ads and the remaining trickles down to the artists. Carter and Braun both agreed that concert tours are the main revenue stream for artists.

And what about Twitter? Both managers said that Twitter is a great way to connect with fans, especially for artists who were discovered by fans on YouTube. Twitter breaks down the layers between the artists and the fan, says Carter. Braun says that Bieber loves talking to his fans over Twitter (perhaps that’s why he’s always a trending topic!).

E: That last video was Grayson Chance,
T: We found him on YouTube
E: Is YouTube the new MTV. How do you find the new pop star?
S: You get lucky. I was managing Akon, and Justin happened to be on YouTube singing Aretha Franklin’s Respect. We thought how are we going to break him with an online strategy vs. a Nickelodeon or Disney show.
E: So how did you do this-
S: I had this gut feeling about Justin-we started strategy of creating more content online, when we talked to major labels, the thought was without a TV show you can’t break a teenage star. We wanted to be the first artist to break off of YouTube, Even when we had 55 million hits on YT, no one wanted to sign. We are signed with Universal, We went platinum, no Disney or Nickelodeon.
E: With Lady Gaga, was YouTube instrumental.
T: Actually it was MySpace. Interscope heard her on MySpace. It was always MySpace, YouTube. That was four years ago.
E: Has marketing channel shifted from MySpace to YouTube.
T: We make our music video for YouTube.
E: Would videos now made it on MTV years ago?
T: Now we know that if we make a ten min video for YouTube, people will watch it.
E: There is some product placement in LG’s video?
T: Virgin Mobile is a tour sponser,
E: Did the product placement pay for the video?
T: Sometimes it makes a profit, but most of the time it breaks even
S: No one uses MySpace anymore.
T: Everyone was sending me links to Grayson Chance, and I jumped on it.
E: Now you are just sitting on the computer to find artists on YouTube?
S: Now its about discovery-fans have been watching musicians now for years on YouTube before they become famous. People wonder how do you monetize, deal with piracy. But kids are going to buy the product if they really support the personality. When I say Justin;s name, people know his story.
E: How is it that Justin Bieber is always a trending topic on Twitter?
S: He’s a teenager so he likes Twitter, so he’s on Twitter talking to two million girls at his disposable. There are time where we go over stuff, but the only people who has his passwod are me and him. Kids like that the same person who they like is talking to them now.
E: There is a immediacy that people feel with celebrities on Twitter. Can you talk about the close relationship between the fan and the artist on social media?
T: GaGa is a digital baby-that’s how they communicate. There cant be any layers between the artists and their fans.
S: It’s a way to connect with fans, he likes doing it.
S: Music has to become a multimedia business. We are interested n what you do. We have brands that can bring people into technologies. If you have a great product-
E: The lady gaga videos-do they have prerolls, advertising?
T: It’s pree roll or post roll on Vevo. The record company makes money off of that and then it trickles down.
E: is that a significant source of money?
T: Not at all. The main money resource is concerts.

When it comes to billing headaches, there are few industries that can rival the cable companies: from the dizzying array of channel packages to actually figuring out which services you can get at your house, ordering cable or satellite service is often a major pain (and you inevitably walk away from the experience feeling like you’re somehow getting ripped off). Now BillShrink is launching a new feature that looks to make these headaches a thing of the past, putting its cost-cutting engine against a huge database of television service options to help you pick out the best one.

Using the new feature is simple: enter your address and how much you currently pay for your television service. Next, tell BillShrink what categories of channels you’re interested in; options include entertainment, lifestyle, movies, and sports. If there are some channels you absolutely have to have, you can list those too (you can even enter the name of your favorite TV shows, and BillShrink will figure out what channel they air on).

Finally, you tell BillShrink how many TVs you will be hooking up (you can designate options like HDTV and whether or not you want that TV to have a DVR). The whole process takes around two minutes.

Once you’re done inputting your information, BillShrink will look through the TV services available in your area (including both cable and satellite) and tell you what the optimum plan is for you. The site makes it easily to quickly look up which channels are included in each suggested package, and BillShrink shows you how much each option in the plan costs, both during your initial signup period (when the cable companies give you a steep discount) and once your rates jump up to the “normal” (read: gouging) prices. Once you find a plan you like, BillShink gives you a phone number to call and tells you what plan to ask for.

This is a great addition to the BillShrink lineup, but it’s still missing a few features. For one, the site doesn’t currently show the prices for bundle deals that cover multiple services (e.g. Television service + Internet). Fortunately it’s not hard to add Internet service to the packages BillShrink suggests — just ask for it when you call the cable/satellite company — and CEO Peter Pham says that bundles are on the way. He also says that the site will soon offer a way to sign up for these cable/satellite packages online, without having to call the companies.

This is BillShrink’s sixth vertical, and Pham says more are on the way — its other cost-cutting tools include  support for savings accounts, gas stations, credit cards, and phone bills. The site also recently scored a deal with Walmart, which features Billshrink on its in-store cell phone kiosks.

Yesterday MasterCard announced a definitive plan to open up its credit cards payments platform to developers to build innovative online and mobile apps. Of course, this has been the territory that PayPal has basked in, thanks to a much hyped launch of its API, PayPal X. PayPal senior director of PayPal X, Damon Hougland was quick to defend its place in the arena, saying that since its API was released last Fall, “thousands of developers have signed up, hundreds of apps have been built, and millions of dollars have transacted over our platform.”

While this is at the forefront of innovation for MasterCard, PayPal says that the developers who are building off of its platform are ahead of the curve. The company cites Bump, a technology to swap information between smartphones by tapping them together, which is used in PayPal’s iPhone app, allowing people to “bump” iPhones to transfer money (the app was downloaded more than one million times in the first three weeks it was out).

PayPal, which cites Facebook, Salesforce and IBM as users of its API and technology, says that next month it will offer developers the ability to collect credit card payments from within their PayPal X based application.

So is MasterCard a real threat to PayPal? Of course, MasterCard has not been known as the most developer friendly in the past, whereas PayPal has spent the past year reaching out to the developer community, even holding a conference completely for developers. But it also may come down to the revenue share numbers. PayPal said last year that it charges developers a $0.50 cents flat free per transaction or 0.75 percent of transaction depending on user cases. MasterCard hasn’t yet released numbers on revenue share (the platform won’t be released until later this year).

Hello, Chair, the company that develops a social app recommendation engine within an iPhone app, has raised $850,000 in funding from Harrison Metal Capital, Mitch Kapor, Chris Sacca, and Wilson Sonsini. The startup previously raised money from Y Combinator and David Parker.

Hello, Chair’s Appsaurus competes with the Apple Genius feature, serving as recommendation service for mobile apps on the iPhone. Here’s how it works. After launching the application, you’ll be presented with a handful of semi-popular apps from the App Store and asked to pick the one you like best. Once you pick your favorite, it shows you another round of apps. After four rounds or so, the app begins to learn your preferences, and you keep ranking more apps to help fine-tune its recommendations. In essence, it’s trying to build a profile based on your entire library of apps, not just one. If you’re presented with an application that you’ve never heard of, you can hit an arrow to read its summary and see screenshots.

The startup is also releasing a new version of the app that now recommends iPad apps, helping users discover which apps they want. The App Store has not yet switched on the Genius feature for iPad apps, so this functionality is definitely compelling. The new version also includes Lists, a comprehensive library feature for organizing your apps. Appsaurus will also serve you recommendations based on any of your lists.

One of our pain points with the App was that it didn’t have a syncing functionality to import your current apps, making you manually have to input your apps. The new version of the app includes Cloud Sync, which allows users to sync their phone’s apps from the Appsaurus Sync desktop app directly to their “Installed” list in Appsaurus for instantly relevant recommendations.

Hello Chair has considerable experience in developing mobile app recommendations. In 2008, they launched Appalanche, which shared some similarities with Appsaurus in that it was meant to help surface interesting apps, but was a web app rather than a native download. The precursor to Appalanche is an ad voting engine called Adpinion.

Traveling around the world, learning, networking, sharing – that’s what GeeksOnAPlane (GOAP), a field trip of sorts (which takes place a couple of times a year), is mainly about. This time, the tour is leading a group of 30+ geeks (mainly from the US) to no less than five tech hot spots in Asia: Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul, Singapore, and Tokyo. I am joining the trip as an embedded blogger, exploring the current trends in Asia’s web and mobile world, and the implications of the Asian tech revolution for the industry in the US and elsewhere.

The GOAP already got a first crash course on China’s Internet landscape from a number of local VCs, entrepreneurs and tech journalists we met in Shanghai, the first leg of the tour (which ended yesterday). This part of the tour included Silicon Valley-based investor Dave McClure (who brought GOAP to life) pitching the StartupVisa movement to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Shanghai Expo 2010 (see picture above), an “East meets West” blogger meetup, witnessing the first ever “Ignite” show in Shanghai, taking part in a Mobile Monday event, and networking at a Startup2Startup Dinner/Fast Pitch event in downtown Shanghai.

One of the main takeaways is that the web and mobile market in Asia is not only huge already, but that it’s poised to become even bigger in the future. The spectacular growth is fueled by a large reservoir of entrepreneurs, a huge potential customer base and both local and international investors looking for the next big thing to come out of Asia.

Everybody the GOAP met in Shanghai was bullish about Asia’s online future – for a good reason. Take some recent web usage statistics, for example. Asia already boasts the most Internet users in the world (764 million out of a global web population of 1.8 billion people at the end of last year). And while North America has an Internet penetration of around 76%, many Asian countries are still largely offline: according to some sources, the Internet penetration for Asia as a whole stands at a mere 20%.

There is little doubt that China in particular will continue to play the biggest role in the region. The country has 400 million (and counting) Internet users and a whopping 770 million cell phone subscribers. In other words, China not only boasts the world’s largest Internet population (the US is second with 248 million web users), but it’s the world’s biggest mobile nation, too – by far (there are 585 million handsets used in India, and 285 million in the US).

And even in China, there’s still a lot of room for growth. Take the mobile market as one example. According to some pundits the GOAP met in Shanghai, many Chinese people with low income (especially those living in rural areas) skipped buying laptops in recent years but access the web through their cell phones instead. Yet, “just” 200 million people access the web through their cell phones, and just 20 million Chinese users are on 3G currently (that number is said to balloon to 150 million next year).

But enough with crunching numbers. Check out this (excellent yet slightly dated) presentation from Shanghai-based consultancy and incubator Web2Asia for an overview on China’s Internet and how it differs from the rest of the world:

Make sure to check out the rethink: Shanghai homepage for substantial information about what’s currently happening in China’s tech scene. I’ll be summarizing what the GOAP learn in Beijing (the next stop of the tour) and the other cities over the next few days here on TechCrunch.

For information in real-time, follow the adventures of the GOAP via the #goap hash tag (the official Twitter account is here). GOAP pictures are being uploaded regularly over on Flickr.

Photo credit: Kris Krüg, Static Photography

TechCrunch Nordic – Copenhagen – 26th May 2010
TechCrunch Europe is hosting its 3rd TechCrunch Nordic event – joining the Seedcamp startup programme on their European tour in Copenhagen.

Below you’ll find our live stream from the event which kicks off at 2.30pm Copenhagen time.

The BBC’s video on demand service, iPlayer is introducing social networking features which should further boost the uptale of Twitter and Facebook in the UK – as if they needed any boosting. The new iPlayer Beta is set to go live officially at the end of June.

Twitter, Facebook and Windows Live Messenger will be linked to a user’s “BBC ID” which they get when they register on BBC.co.uk. Users will be able to share what they’re watching over social networks (queue lots of “Watching Britains Got Talent” updates) while Windows Messenger will show in real-time how many minutes a user is in to a program on iPlayer and allow them to sync viewing with friends and chat about the show in realtime. The features will also work for BBC radio stations.

A hundred startups lined-up the Startup Alley at TechCrunch Disrupt. Here’s just a small taste of some of the interesting companies that over 1,700 attendees were able to see:

6rounds

6rounds, which we wrote about in a previous post can be best described as a snazzy one-on-one video chat product.

At TechCrunch Disrupt, 6rounds announced a new API for developers of game, entertainment and collaboration-based apps. With the API, developers can easily integrate all the rich and interactive functionality of 6rounds, including gifting, video effects, and the ability to add multi-user functionality to single player games and videos.

AppFirst

AppFirst provides real-time visibility into the performance of individual applications within application stacks. The idea behind AppFirst’s SaaS-based performance management is to provide visibility into the performance and operational characteristics of applications regardless of language, application type or location (cloud, physical or virtual servers).

With this type of visibility organizations can flag changes before they become problems and have a negative impact on internal users, or external customers.

AppFirst is NYC-based with backing by FirstMark Capital and First Round Capital.

RankAbove

Seven months after we wrote about its closed beta, RankAbove is pushing its automated SEO analysis product, Drive, into open beta.

Drive is intended for sites with a minimum of 1000 pages, up to several million. It performs everything from keyword research and on-page analysis, to link building and acquisition.

For the open beta, RankAbove made some product improvements such as new backlink analysis tool, daily updated competitive analysis, opportunities to find organic relevant backlinks and a new UI. If you’re at Disrupt, stop by their booth for a free site analysis.

sProphet

sProphet (Sports Prophet) lets fans share sports knowledge by predicting outcomes of real sporting events. For example, they can predict which baseball batter will have the longest batting streak in the MLB this week.

Users play with virtual money to challenge their friends and arrange group prediction tournaments.

sProphet is offered through a destination site, via a Facebook application and soon through a widget which will be offered to partners such as sports sites and portals.

We were fortunate enough to witness a lot of fascinating startups strut their stuff here at TechCrunch Disrupt, not just on the main stage but also in the Startup Alley and beyond.

But of course the event is and remains a competition, so the experts have been working hard to select those startups with the most potential to be genuinely disruptive, and vote them into the second round of the pitching contest. Just ten of the original twenty startups have been invited back to round two.

The final few startups will be announced tomorrow, and they’ll be back on stage for the final round of demo and rapid-fire Q&A with our experts.

Appbistro

Appbistro is an application marketplace for Facebook pages. At Appbistro, page administrators can quickly find applications that they can easily plug into their pages and quickly increase the engagement and reach of their pages. The applications within the marketplace are built by known and vetted Facebook developers, and feature applications for Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, and more.

Here’s our review + CrunchBase profile + video.

Betterment

Betterment is the replacement for your savings account. It’s a smart investment that’s easy to use, and you have access to your money at any time. You invest in our two portfolios—a diverse basket of stocks and a portfolio of ultra-safe bonds—in a blend of your choosing. There’s no minimum balance, no transaction fees, and no investing experience required. So you earn more from your savings with fewer hassles.

Here’s our review + CrunchBase profile + video.

Compass Labs

Compass Labs is a social e-commerce company, which increases the effectiveness of social networks for both users and advertisers. Users obtain timely, highly relevant information, and advertisers to precisely reach users at the right moment. Compass Labs’s solutions are effective in extracting precise meaning from social media communication, and leveraging that for timely and precise ads targeting, and for enabling content/user discovery.

Here’s our review + CrunchBase profile + video.

LiveIntent

LiveIntent‘s mission is to help you create meaningful connections on social media. It helps answer the question: “Who do I follow?”. For publishers, having a LiveIntent window on your site is opening the door to let in engaged and repeat users to your site, significantly increasing pageviews, ad impressions, unique visitors, and revenue.

For advertisers, it’s an enabling technology that builds stronger and longer lasting relationships between brands and consumers in social media.

Here’s our review + CrunchBase profile + video.

MOVIECLIPS

MOVIECLIPS.com is a premium online video destination offering audiences the largest and most diverse collection of movie scenes. It allows fans to find, watch and share more than 12,000 movie clips. Each clip is tagged with up to 1,000 pieces of data (dialogue, actor, director, action, mood, etc) to make the most searchable collection of movie scenes on the web. Users can also compete in movie trivia games and create hilarious movie mashups.

Here’s our review + CrunchBase profile + video.

Plantly

Plantly is a risk-aware investment tool. They use a lot of advanced tools to show users exactly what will happen to their investments based on various scenarios. “We want you to touch this to get a feel for what will happen to your money,” is the way they put it.

Here’s our review + CrunchBase profile + video.

Publish2

Publish2 is an ambitious new project trying to find a fix for the Associated Press nightmare that newspapers are forced to deal with because of a lack of any viable alternative. It is the easiest way to share and distribute news for print and web publishing. Publish2 News Exchange enables newspapers to create a comprehensive, customized newswire for print, combining content sharing networks with the highest quality free and paid news sources. Publish2 Link Newswire captures the collective editorial judgment of journalists, based on what they read every day, to create engaging news aggregation features for multichannel distribution.

Here’s our review + CrunchBase profile + video.

Soluto

Soluto brings an end to the frustrations PC users encounter, with transparency, honesty, killer technology, and your help. Its software combines advanced technology with collective wisdom, to detect PC users’ frustrations, reveal their cause, learn which actions really eliminate them and improve user experience. Soluto is mapping the PCGenome, a knowledge base of frustrations and solutions built automatically through the usage of Soluto software, for the benefit of all PC users.

Here’s our review + CrunchBase profile + video.

UJAM

UJAM (CrunchBase) is a cloud-based platform that empowers everybody to easily create new music or enhance their existing musical talent and share it with friends. Like Jason wrote: “it can turn your humming, whistling, kazoo-playing or not-so-in-tune vocals into something people might actually want to listen to. And it’s really, really cool.”

Here’s our review (there are links to other coverage from around the Web in there).
Bonus: a video of Chris Sacca singing.

WeReward

WeReward is a mobile incentive platform that rewards consumers for actions they take in the real world. Consumers earn points for photo-verified location check ins or performing tasks. Each point is worth a penny, consumers can cash out directly from their mobile device. Businesses utilize WeReward’s self service platform to incent customer purchases and drive loyalty. The platform lets them see who their customers are, what their experience was and how often they purchase.

Here’s our review + video.