It would be neat to read Twitter on that. (Photo: Hashgram)

The movies are no longer our one place of reprieve from social media. Twitter and Foursquare both announced partnerships yesterday with National CineMedia, a company that creates those annoying pre-show ads, to integrate the two sites into your movie viewing experience.

For the deal with Twitter, National CineMedia will pull data from the platform for the totally innovative idea of creating a weekly series that highlights tweets and trending topics related to the movies. So, get excited to read annoyed fan's tweets about how overrated The Great Gatsby was on a 50 foot screen.

As for Foursquare's arrangement with National CineMedia, the app will provide users with offers that aims "to be relevant to the movie-going experience." Few details were revealed aside from the fact that the ad company’s sales team will work with movie chains to offer advertising on Foursquare’s check-ins and search function.

"Movie-goers spend a lot of time on those small screens, too," said Cliff Marks, National CineMedia's president. "For the first time, advertisers will be able to connect their ad on the big screen with the audience's mobile device."

Glad we figured out a way to make the future of going to the movies even more irritating.

(Photo: Flickr)

If there was one salient lesson gleaned from the two-hour, day-glo sex romp that was Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers, it was this: just pretend that life's a video game. As it turns out, Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley maintains the same mantra. At the Twofixsix conference in Brooklyn, presented by gaming magazine Kill Screen, Mr. Crowley told the crowd that his success in tech largely hinges on his love of video games.

"The Zelda games were a big influence on how I saw the city,” Mr. Crowley said, according to the Wall Street Journal. In fact, they made him wonder, "Can you apply that magical experience you have in those games and bring them out into the real world?"

Instead of a magical experience, though, Mr. Crowley came up with Foursquare, an app for bragging to people about the time you went above 14th Street.

You too could be successful in tech, if only you can pretend life is a video game with no financial or emotional consequences. Just think of a down round like losing and having to start from the beginning of the level!

Mr. Crowley (screencap)

This week is the New York edition of TechCrunch Disrupt, which means it's time for the annual friendly grilling of Silicon Alley personalities. Taking his turn in the hot seat this morning: Fuelband-brandishing Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley.

This year's conference takes place in the least startup-y of neighborhoods: right next door to Penn Station, in the Hammerstein Ballroom. It's covered in faux rococo detailing, and the carpet has seen better days, possibly during the Ford administration, and don't even try sitting down on the stairs to make a phone call because you will be bounced.

So it was in incongruous surroundings that @dens tackled a no-fun question: Where did all the adulation go? 

"We're not the shiny new thing any more," Mr. Crowley admitted with a shrug. "We're in that interesting hazing period for companies, where people are still skeptical of whether this company is going to be able to pull it off or not."

"It's not terribly daunting," he added, all but literally brushing his shoulder off. "It's fine if people are skeptical of what we're doing--let's just put our heads down and focus on the work we're doing."

That doesn't mean he could resist a couple of digs at "the haters," the metaphorical pebble in Mr. Crowley's cross-trainers. He suggested that, "there's a lot of people who still think of us as 2009 Foursquare," adding that, "the biggest haters and critics haven't opened the app for six months." Makes you wonder about those monthly active user numbers.

He also responded to former Square Keith Rabois, who recently criticized Foursquare on Twitter. "I don't think he's looking at the same data we're looking at," Mr. Crowley said. Diplomatic! He went on to point out that Mr. Rabois is on the board of Yelp and suggested that he probably ought to be worried. "We don't pay attention to people that are misinformed."

Do startup execs take lessons in shade from the contestants of Rupaul's Drag Race?

He also called the perception that Foursquare isn't growing false, saying the metrics they track regularly (like active users and signups) are all growing 10 to 30 percent month over month. On the merchant side, a million businesses have claimed their listing on Foursquare, making it easier to sell them on promos. Mr. Crowley said revenue growth is steady and the company is "routinely signing six-figure deals" with national merchants.

Not that he'd cough up much in the way of hard numbers, though: "We're a private company, so we don't have to disclose our master plan for you," he pointedly replied to one of interviewer Colleen Taylor's more probing questions.

Also, Mr. Crowley described himself as an Uber "super user." So there's that.

(Photo: Dan Lampariello, via Twitter)

Earlier this afternoon, two huge explosions ripped through downtown Boston near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, injuring spectators and athletes alike. It's still very unclear what's going on, but there's a familiar face reporting in from the scene. Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley was running the marathon today--you might have seen his automatic check-ins from every milepost, interspersed with the occasional mid-stride misspelled tweet.

But the auto-updates suddenly stopped. After reassuring everyone he was fine, Mr. Crowley began tweeting dispatches from the middle of the race:

I'm ok.about 20k of us in corral just before mi 26. marker. @chelsa ok too

— Dennis Crowley (@dens) April 15, 2013

FYI no one at mi 26 has any idea what's happening. — Dennis Crowley (@dens) April 15, 2013

rumor has it rest of race is canceled. but no cell service so lots if rumors / can't get texts thu so can't plan family rendezvous — Dennis Crowley (@dens) April 15, 2013

god bless you mophie battery park. every runner is almost dead battery. people see me texting and queuing to use my phone

— Dennis Crowley (@dens) April 15, 2013

scene at mile 26 - mass ave @ comm ave twitter.com/dens/status/32…

— Dennis Crowley (@dens) April 15, 2013

btw it juuusssst hit me how lots of walking on mi 24 may have saved me a bit. pretty shaken up.

— Dennis Crowley (@dens) April 15, 2013

Reports suggest that cell service in the area is overwhelmed, so don't panic if you can't reach someone and texting is likely better than calling.

Someone has already posted a Vine of the explosion itself, grabbed from news coverage, and it's frankly horrifying. @Dens and everyone else in Boston--stay safe.

(Photo: Sound Ctrl)

Everyone, it seems, has an opinion about Foursquare, the New York-based check-in and recommendations app that was the breakout darling of SXSW 2009.

Former Square COO Keith Rabois recently engaged in a very public dustup with Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley on Twitter, tweeting that only a "Hail Mary Bebo-style acquisition will bail you out." In January, data and research company PrivCo predicted that the startup will fail by the end of the year, eventually surrendering to an acquisition price of no more than $50 million (though the analysis didn't account for mobile traffic). In November of last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that investors were "cooling" on Foursquare. "The company claims more than 25 million registered users, but only about 8 million of them use the app at least once a month," it wrote.

Now, Businessweek reports that Foursquare has raised $41 million in loans and convertible debt from Silver Lake Partners, a private equity fund, as well as Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures and others. The influx of capital, Businessweek notes, will allow Foursquare time to grow as it tussles with low revenue (a source tells BW that the company only made $2 million last year) and works to launch a new ad program that will allow all of its merchants to serve mobile ads.

Foursquare's latest update to its iOS app brought search and recommendations to the forefront; sources also told Betabeat that the company has toyed with the idea of a recommendations app not equipped with check-ins, which speaks volumes about where the value of the app lies. A new mobile ad strategy, which would most likely serve ads to users based on their location, could help to greatly increase revenue at the company.

Taking on debt instead of raising a new round also helps Foursquare avoid a dreaded down round and what would undoubtedly be a fierce public debate about its valuation. The Series C in 2011 brought the company's total capital to $71 million at a valuation of $600 million, but the novelty of a check-in app seems to have worn off since then, and that coupled with thin yearly revenues could lead to a lower valuation.

One source told Betabeat that the company is “frustrated with lack of hype/momentum/growth," and that company culture has transitioned from “uplifting” to “oh shit."

Investors in this debt round are patient, allowing Mr. Crowley the time he needs to expand the business. But others, like Greylock's John Lilly, declined to participate--according to BW, he simply thinks Foursquare's $600 million valuation is too high.

Photo: Fast Company

HopStop, Now With Complaints On Monday, transit app HopStop released its new social app HopStop Live!, which lets users update each other in real time on transit issues and changes. (Because the only thing more fun than dealing with transit issues is hearing other people complain about transit issues.) The app is also designed to create communities around specific subway and bus lines, which could help cities identify which lines need improvements or additions. Although this is great for HopStop users, we still prefer the simplistic istheltrainfucked.com.

The MTA Wants Next Generation Apps And in other transit news, the MTA is partnering with AT&T  for a hackathon and AppQuest challenge with NYU Poly and Challenge Post in order to develop the next-generation of public transportation apps. Some of the goals of the challenge include developing tech solutions to navigating time tables and alerts, helping travelers navigate inside stations, integrating with other apps, and developing user generated data. The hackathon will take place May 4 and 5 at NYU Poly in Downtown Brooklyn, with winners sharing $10,000 in prize money. They'll also be automatically entered in the AppQuest challenge, which is scheduled to conclude in early September. Hopefully the developers of istheltrainfucked will enter with an expanded site, "isthemtafucked.com."

Foursquare Version 6.0 Makes Stalking Your Friends Even Easier Today saw the release of Foursquare's newest update, version 6.0, which streamlines the geolocation service to more easily access the app’s core features. Now when you open Foursquare, the search function is at the top, while a map with your friends' most recent locations and personalized recommendations (based on a newly developed search algorithm) displays along with the signature check-in button at the bottom.

Jason Rapp Joins Science Inc. Digital business developer and technology studio (and owner of the most unoriginal company name ever) Science Inc. announced Monday the hiring of Jason Rapp as the company's Managing Director. Mr. Rapp previous experience includes time as president and member of the board of directors at educational app and video compnay Mahalo.com, senior executive in Barry Diller’s IAC corporation, where he served as CEO of Gifts.com, and as an executive at The New York Times Company. The Santa Monica-based company has more than 13 investments with companies such as DollarShaveClub, DogVacay, Ellie, Uncovet and others. Maybe the first thing Mr. Rapp should do at Science Inc. is work on a new company name.

People Like Reading Tech on Their Tech Mobile publishing developer OnSwipe released their most recent user data, and it looks like people can't get enough of reading about their technology. With 16 million unique iOS users per month, technology was the most popular topic on the OnSwipe platform both in terms of page views and average time spent on its apps. Other popular topics included men’s and women’s fashion and general news and politics. My, OnSwipe's users are a versatile bunch.

Barkbox, The Birchbox For Dogs (Really?) You know the monthly delivery craze is reaching its zenith when Barkbox, a Birchbox-style doggy treat and toy delivery service, not only has 35,000 subscribers, but just received $5 million in investments from venture firm RRE Ventures. The new funding is on top of the $1.7 million the startup recieved last year from a similar group of investors.Barkbox plans to expand its efforts after rebranding the company to Bark & Co., with BarkPost, a website which CEO Matt Meeker describes as “a dog-specific version of BuzzFeed’s 'animals' site,” according to allthingsd.com, and BarkCare, a $200 annual vet consultation service that  gives dog owners 24/7 access to vets by phone. Pet startups: the new tech bubble!

AppNexus Is All-In Today the adtech platform AppNexus announced an "all-in" commitment to mobile advertising by extending its technology to mobile platforms. “We built the technology foundation that unlocked unprecedented innovation and spend in display. Now we’re taking the same approach to mobile, allowing our customers to do business ‘full spectrum’ seamlessly across display and mobile,” said CEO Brian O' Kelly. The announcement comes after AppNexus raised $75 million in January in Series D round investments, led by Technology Crossover Ventures.

Mr. Crowley, who ducked out to run a half-marathon.

Do high-powered tech types have any idea of the right way to spend a weekend? Apparently not: When VC and former Square COO Keith Rabois made a critical, slightly snide remark about how Foursquare is faring, he ignited a two-day-long tussle over when it's okay to criticize a founder.

I swear, sometimes you'd think we were covering the goings-on among seventh-grade cliques.

It all started when newly minted VC Hunter Walk tweeted, "Wow, who knew 40,000 developers use the @foursquare API..." Pretty innocuous! But it seems Mr. Rabois couldn't contain a smart remark, and so began the sequel to his Twitter brawl with @dens from back in November:

We assume it's the months of rumors about a possible down round that has Mr. Crowley so sensitive.

Buddy Media founder Michael Lazerow chimed in (on his LinkedIn blog), tut-tutting Mr. Rabois for daring to shit-talk a founder. Mr. Lazerow complained that "founder-on-founder verbal violence seems to be at an all-time high" and then proceeded to take a swipe at Mr. Rabois, pointing out that as helpful as he is, well, he's never started a company, which apparently makes him a second-class citizen in the Valley:

Keith was the Art Garfunkel to the Paul Simon of each of his companies. The Barney Fife to each of his Sheriff Taylors. Change Entourage to Entrepreneurage and Keith is Turtle to the Vincent that is Jack Dorsey.

Art Garfunkel? Way harsh, Tai.

Business Insider added some real value with a recap that confused Square and Foursquare, as well as mixing up Mr. Walk and the Observer's own Hunter Walker. Whoopsie daisy!

@Dens ducked out to run a half-marathon, as one does, but that doesn't mean Foursquare's honor was simply there for the besmirching. Anil Dash strapped on his suit of shining armor and pointed out that Mr. Rabois is on the board of Yelp and maybe he ought to bring that little tidbit up when he criticizes Fourquare:

Whatever your thoughts on the future of Foursquare, surely we can all rally around of keeping hashtags like #hatersclub out of our tech talk?

(Photo: Deviantart)

Turns out having a book on the top of Amazon's bestseller list does not make you an automatic millionaire. [Salon]

After the announcement that Google Reader would shut down in July, more than 500,000 users have already migrated to Feedly. [The Verge]

Foursquare is reportedly close to closing a Series D round that would value it at less than the valuation from its Series C. [TechCrunch]

According to his lawyer, Matthew Keys' legal defense is going to be that he was doing work as an undercover investigative journalist. Oh, we can flout the law under the guise of “journalism!”? Brb, going to loot the Apple store. [The Next Web]

An NYU student has invented a gel that can help stop bleeding in wounds. But can it mend college’s primary injury: broken hearts? [New York Post]

(Photo: Amazon)

Front Page Printed Pages of the Internet Just before taking stage at SXSW to talk his crowdfunded Internet 2012 tour, Alexis Ohanian emailed out a link to his new book, Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made, Not Managed.

Since you asked, Mr. Ohanian, we dig the cover, but "without their permission," sounds a little iffy in the context of Reddit's Creepshot scandal, no?

Last week, we wondered when Mr. Ohanian was running for office already. “Alas no,” he emailed back. “I'm not going to rule anything out but right now I'm having too much fun (and impact) from my place in the private sector.” However, as the Young Entrepreneur Council founder Scott Gerber pointed out, Mr. Ohanian does happen to own the domain name ohanian2013.com.

Just checking in 525,600 minutes. How do you measure a year in the life of a (defoundered) man? Earlier this week, on the anniversary of his abrupt departure from Foursquare, cofounder Naveen Selvadurai posted a recap of the last 12 months. Don't expect to learn much about what he's been working on, though. Think more in daylights, in sunsets, in midnights and cups of coffee.

Mr. Selvadurai lost the founder 15; he traveled; he saw his family and friends; he traveled some more; he read books; he went to Disney and rode Space Mountain many times; he learned to drive stick; he went to the Olympics. "I always kept saying 'year 30' wouldn’t be such a big deal and that it’s just like any other. it turned out to be so much more and i’m grateful for that," he reflected.

Oh, but he might have picked up a bit of a gloomy streak, too:

this is how the war will start - "ohio man charged with shooting robot" singularityhub.com/2013/03/04/ohi…

— naveen (@naveen) March 6, 2013

(Photo: Instagram/Dens)

So (proto)typical Google Glasses are now just popping up everywhere, it seems. The latest sighting comes via Digg community manager Veronica De Souza: "SPOTTED: A skater bro wearing google glass in bedstuy. Who are you?" she tweeted. Betebeat welcomes any intel as to the identity of this mystery man, so we can pester him until he lets us try his specs on.

Maybe Dennis Crowley knows the guy. The Foursquare cofounder recently, "lost my Google Glass virginity."

(Photo: Instagram/Fred Benenson)

Spotted! Our friends at Quora--the erudite agoraphobe’s answer to Yahoo! Answers--never got the memo that print was dead. Thus earlier this year, the site opted to publish a 441-page hardcover book called “The Best of Quora,” featuring 131 primers. Forbes called it a “fascinating, enchanting, exasperating book,” and wondered if the inquiring minds of Quora were “too clever” for their own good.

Author Clive Thompson and Kickstarter’s Fred Benenson got to thumb through the pages and see for themselves when they spotted a copy “in the wild” at Lil Frankie’s Pizza in the East Village. Mr. Thompson said on Instagram that he received an advanced copy this week. As Bill Couch, a front-end product engineer at Twitter explained in the comments, “[Quora] issued them as gifts to the authors of those answers at the end of last year, then provided it as a PDF online.”

Guess the question about Betabeat didn’t make the cut.

:( Guys, we think Tumblr really hurt Shelby.tv cofounder Reece Pacheco feelings. He recently published a long, sad blog post announcing, "Tumblr I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down." Nothing says heartache like LCD Soundsystem! So what set Mr. Pacheco off? He logged into Tumblr the other day, as he does regularly, and found himself subjected to a laborious, drawn-out attempt to get him to follow more blogs. Then, he was given a few hovering tool tips--on a service he's been using for years.

He did not like this!

Thing is, I wouldn’t be so frustrated with you, Tumblr, if I didn’t love the platform so much. If you were just some other social network, I’d say “Do whatever you want. I don’t care. Your only value is your scale.”

But that’s not you, so don’t treat me like some number. You know I’m active. You know I’m a creator more than a reblogger. Treat me that way and show me some added benefit, rather than just trying to get more mindless engagement out of me.

Sorry, Reece--those revenue targets aren't gonna hit themselves.

Mmm, cake Happy birthday to GroupMe cofounder Steve Martocci, who got quite the gift in celebration. There's a Vine of the festivities, but here's a teaser:

Looks like a party, alright!

High fashion Huffpo cofounder Kenny Lerer is well known around Silicon Alley as an investor. But did anyone know he is, as his son Ben Lerer put it on Twitter, "fcking fashionable"? Mr. Lerer the Elder recently appeared in a New York Times profile of Laurent DeLouya, "the amiable proprietor of a hair salon that over 50 years has amassed a following that is kind of a cultural Core Club." Papa Lerer told the Times he'd "walk over hot coals for Laurent,” and apparently Mr. DeLouya performed baby Ben's first haircut at age 3.

We yearn to someday achieve that kind of rapport with a stylist.

User #279 Your user number can be a figure of pride among the tech set. If it's low enough it signals that you're an early adopter, and makes you feel cool, which is kinda sad if you think about it cuz like, look at your life.

"I'm User No. 279," humblebragged New York Times tech writer Nick Bilton in a recent Twitter back and forth. "I got @dens drunk and [sic] Nick Denton's house and made him give me a beta account."

Whatever works.

Foursquare is adding Visa, Mastercard and debit cards to its check-in deals program as it attempts to expand an existing revenue model. The company has let users pay for the deals—which users can access after checking in at participating locations—with American Express since 2011. [AllThingsD]

The U.S. government wasted millions of dollars in its attempts to expand broadband wireless service, according to a Republican congressman. [Bloomberg]

Thomas Pynchon's next novel is said to be set in Silicon Alley, in the period between the dot-com boom and the terrorist attacks of September 11; here are some rejected plot lines. [PandoDaily]

The Visual Effects crowd is pissed off, and rightfully, it seems, about the lack of airtime it was afforded during the Academy Awards on Sunday. Television broadcasts largely ignored demonstrators protesting the state of the VFX industry, in which many jobs have been shipped overseas; meanwhile, the Oscar winner for VFX had his speech cut short, and Ang Lee, who won Best Director for his CGI-heavy Life of Pi, forgot to thank his VFX man. [The Big Social Picture]

Uber is signing up drivers in San Francisco; no taxi license needed, but there will be a test. [Engadget]