Except to see more of this. (Photo: Guest of a Guest)

It's never too early to start speculating about the next election cycle. So we're calling it, less than a month into the new year: 2013 will be New York tech’s debut as a political force.

Tech moguls and politicians have always been willing bedfellows, of course. Last year, technophiles in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area outpaced "Hollywood celebrities and Wall Street moguls" in funding President Obama's reelection campaign, according to a report from MapLight.com. On the other side of the aisle--like far, far to the right--Facebook investor Peter Thiel "almost single-handedly" funded Ron Paul's super PAC. After his fringe candidate dropped out of the race, Mr. Thiel donated $1 million to Club for Growth Action, a Tea Party super PAC.

Locally, however, New York's tech set has been able to rely on the Bloomberg administration asking for their two cents on what might benefit the community. Cornell-Technion's applied sciences campus and the software engineering high school, for example, were responses to founders and investors bemoaning the talent crunch for engineers.

The dialogue was mutually beneficial. After Wall Street's collapse, New York City Economic Development Corporation president Seth Pinsky kicked off a number of initiatives, like funding General Assembly's urban campus and launching app competitions, in the hopes that a robust startup sector would mitigate losses in the financial industry.

But with the countdown clock ticking on Mr. Bloomberg's third term and the success of defeating SOPA/PIPA, New York's techies are taking a more proactive role in making sure City Hall is invested in their success.

This week, the New York Tech Meetup announced plans to host a series of candidate forums in advance of upcoming citywide elections. Leaders of the 30,000-member group are also soliciting input on seven proposals under the banner “Help Us Make NYC the Best City for Tech in the World!" The slate includes creating a deputy mayor for technology innovation and providing New Yorkers with the fastest broadband at the lowest possible price.

Local entrepreneurs and investors are also voting with their wallet, a pattern the Wall Street Journal says is "likely to continue as the campaign season heats up":

Kevin Ryan, chief executive of online luxury retailer Gilt Groupe, contributed $1,000 to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, a Democrat expected to vie for mayor, and gave the same amount to state Sen. Daniel Squadron and Reshma Saujani, two Democrats preparing to run for public advocate. Andrew Rasiej, chairman of New York Tech Meetup, gave $100 to mayoral hopeful Bill de Blasio. Fred Wilson, of Manhattan-based Union Square Ventures, has contributed the maximum of $4,950 to Mr. Squadron and Ms. Saujani.

As Crain's later reported, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss--who have been hosting political fundraisers at the Hollywood mansion financed by their Facebook settlement--each donated $4,950 to Mr. Squadron's campaign as well.

In fact, the race for public advocate between Ms. Saujani, Mr. Squadron, and Letitia James--all Democrats--is an early sign of the tech sector's eagerness to flex its newfound political clout. Mr. Squadron has been involved in tech initiatives like successfully advocating for an applied sciences campus in Brooklyn. But Ms. Saujani, a former hedge fund lawyer, has cultivated more visible ties to the tech world.

Last year, she founded the very well-regarded non-profit Girls Who Code, which secured backing from Twitter, eBay and Google to educate and encourage teenage girls toward careers in technology and engineering. At private fundraising events, Ms. Saujani has advocated for bringing the same energy and job opportunities in the Flatiron's tech enclave to the outer-boroughs. She recruited Uber to sponsor transportation for volunteers to Far Rockaway after Hurricane Sandy. Her husband, Nihal Mehta, is the founder of the successful advertising startup LocalResponse.

Indeed, while The Village Voice estimated that 40 percent of donations for her 2010 Congressional campaign came from Wall Street big wigs--in addition to high-profile support from Jack Dorsey, Chris Hughes, and Randi Zuckerberg--Ms. Saujani's campaign for public advocate has greatly benefitted from advocates in New York tech, beyond just the Fred Wilsons and Kevin Ryans. No surprise considering she was the first candidate, back in 2010, to accept donations using Square.

According to the New York City Campaign Finance Board, Ms. Saujani has raised $759,711 to Mr. Squadron's $820,008. But Ms. Saujani got a last-minute boost from techies, using the mediums they love best: 150 of her donations were made in the final hours via Twitter and Facebook. Mr. Mehta galvanized last minute social media efforts while he was at Summit Series' mountain in Utah. Gary Vaynerchuk, Adam Braun from Pencils of Promise and Scooter Braun Project CMO Brad Haugen, who has nearly 60,000 Twitter followers, tweeted out their donations, encouraging others to join.

That's in addition to support and fundraising efforts from Gotham Gal and angel investor Joanne Wilson, who donated $4950, as well as Google's community affairs manager Alex Abelin. Last Spring, Gilt Group's Alexis Maybank also headlined an event for her campaign.

"I think with a new mayor there's an awareness in the tech industry that things could change in the relationships between city government and the community--whether it's getting RFPs for incubators or partnering on the academies," Ms. Saujani told Betabeat. It was a morning after the Presidential Inauguration and Ms. Saujani, a former bundler for President Obama, had been in D.C. for the inaugural ball, followed by a party hosted by Electronic Arts. "The change presents a real opportunity for people in the tech sector to be active in the 2013 elections, like we're seeing with New York Tech Meetup and with supporters of my Public Advocate campaign," she continued. "So there's a lot of excitement too."

The startup sector likes to present itself as a positive force for world change. But with more political lobbying, is there a danger, we asked Ms. Saujani, of the tech sphere seeming more like a special interest? "The conversation about innovation in New York City is not just happening in the tech community in Manhattan--it's happening in all five boroughs. Elected officials citywide are interested in bringing more 21st century jobs to their communities, and that means partnering with tech."

Those divergent conversations are part of the reason tech voters are unlikely to present a unified bloc. As Anil Dash told the Journal: "It's venture capitalists and 23-year-old graphic designers in Bushwick. It's labor and management. It's not traditional allies."

Beer Me Storied New York venture capital firm Lerer Ventures knows its target audience. According to a tweet from Scoutmob cofounder Dave Payne, Lerer is hosting a beer pong tournament for some of the companies it has invested in. "just got invited to a beer pong tourney by one of our venture investors," tweeted Mr. Payne. "that's hard core @lererventures. well done."

Competition at the tournament seems like it will be quite fierce. "hope you've been practicing," responded Northeastern student Scott Edelstein. "i've seen@benjlerer win with his eyes closed."

In fact, here's proof:

(Photo: Twitter)

Twitter Tempest There's no beef like a Twitter beef. Exhibit A: This week's digital bar brawl between erstwhile TechCrunch writer Paul Carr (now EIC of NSFW Corporation) and current TechCrunch writer Ryan Lawler.

The opening salvo came from Mr. Carr: "This is the dumbest thing I've read on TechCrunch all hour," he tweeted, pointing to a post uncritically touting some stats from Airbnb. Told, "at least it wasn't a slideshow," Mr. Carr responded: "it would have been had Airbnb sent a slideshow." It might've stayed there, had Mr. Lawler (the author of the piece) not leapt into the fray and gone nuclear. "I wish I could build a career on my own drunkenness and self loathing," he rejoined. Oh, dear.

The back and forth that ensued was collected by the parody account @NextTechBlog and given the title of, "Utterly Embarrassing Interpersonal Shit-Show In Front Of Everyone." And Start-ups: Silicon Valley star Kim Taylor knew her opening when she saw it: "Season 2 of #SiliconValley: Self important tech reporters argue on twitter like 12 year old girls."

Diwali, D.C. Style LocalResponse founder Nihal Mehta spent some time in Washington D.C. this week. But instead of snapping pics at the Lincoln Memorial or going bar hopping in Adams Morgan like your typical D.C. visitor, Mr. Mehta attended the White House's official Diwali celebration. "current status: in the @whitehouse eating a samosa after mtg the first hindu congresswoman @tulsigabbard after #diwalipuja w/@joebiden," Mr. Mehta tweeted. If that doesn't trigger your FOMO sensibilities, he then followed it up with a photo of Vice President Biden lighting the Diwali Diya. Baller status: unlocked.

(Photo: Twitter)

Interpersonal Fitness Adventures in Timehop: Seven years ago, Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley gave all his friends pedometers, "in an attempt to make a poor man's NikeFuel." No word on whether it worked.

Sadface Tumblr ad man Rick Webb shared the below photo--on his Tumblr, natch--depicting a rather deserted-looking Microsoft store. Given that it opened just a few weeks ago, and that the holidays are approaching, shouldn't it be slightly more crowded? Poor Steve Ballmer. "This would be comical if it wasn’t so sad," Mr. Webb offered.

(Photo: Tumblr)

Ayndroids Among Us It seems tech world conscience (and 2012 Tech Insurgent!) Anil Dash had quite the interesting conversation recently. "Odd FB exchange with a founder who says 80% of U.S. are worthless & just take," he tweeted, adding that he "Blocked me when I asked why his homepage doesn't say that." Unfortunately, Mr. Dash didn't reveal the unnamed founder's identity, other than to clarify it wasn't a Facebooker and he'd started "a few companies." Perhaps we'll just dub this mystery man John Galt, which would surely delight him to no end.

As always: Overheard a juicy tidbit about impending departures or imminent acquisitions? Dying to dish about startup blunders or frothy financing? Holler at your girls: tips@betabeat.com We’ve also implemented an anonymous tip box for you covert tipsters out there; you can find it on the top-right corner of our homepage.

Photo taken last night on 8th Street by @dens.

The storm's passed and the sun's up, which means it's time to take account of the havoc wrought on New York City.  That includes the city's techies, many of whom are currently dealing with power outages, water damage, and inconveniences ranging from the minor to the maddening.

On a basic level, with the subways out of commission and a huge swath of downtown Manhattan (a popular neighborhood with techies for work and living alike) without power or cell service, many startup workers are likely either holed up at home or headed north in search of power.

For example, after a long night of tweeting rather dire images from the East Village, Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley reported in this morning:

Hello from 23rd & Park!We okay but no power below 42nd st, no cell service below 23rd st. Cops say could be days before power in EV tho :/

— Dennis Crowley (@dens) October 30, 2012

But it looks like he found shelter soon enough:

Power, wifi and clam chowder. I heart E 50th Street (@ Ashton's Alley Sports Bar w/ @holger @chelsa) 4sq.com/RmYm4G

— Dennis Crowley (@dens) October 30, 2012

Has any sports bar ever seemed so welcoming?

In terms of businesses affected, one victim seems to be the TV livestreaming service Aereo, which had expanded its try-for-free option to serve New Yorkers without cable. Everything was working fine when this reporter went to bed around 12:45 a.m., but upon attempting to log on this morning we found this:

:(

We can't help but worry about that warehouse with all those tiny antennas, secreted away somewhere in Brooklyn. We've reached out to Aereo and will update if we hear anything back. UPDATE 1:05 p.m.: Virginia Lam, Aereo's VP of Communications and Government Relations, tells us the service is back up and try for free has been extended once more. Guess the temporary outage had more to do with the power outages than any more serious damage.

Data centers and servers seem to have taken quite a hit. Gawker Media and the Huffington Post have experienced problems with their sites. Even those who aren't totally screwed are dealing with nagging inconveniences. From reporter Kashmir Hill:

Sandy got the Forbes email server. Please contact me instead via Twitter, FB, Gmail, Goog+, OkCupid, MySpace, Friendster, AOL chat or phone. — Kashmir Hill (@kashhill) October 30, 2012

WYNC's New Tech City program didn't air this morning. Said host Manoush Zomorodi:

Would have been ridiculous to broadcast @wnyc's @newtechcity this AM. Today NYC is decidedly low-tech: SMS and radio rule! — Manoush Zomorodi (@Manoushz) October 30, 2012

DUMBO-based Huge is also closed today, but reports no damage to the company's offices:

We're shut in Brooklyn today (thanks #Sandy), but the office is fine. Our thoughts are with our neighbors. @dumbonyc has local updates. — Huge (@hugeinc) October 30, 2012

SwissMiss Tina Roth Eisenberg reported that Tattly shipments will be a couple of days late, but the team is safe:

Hey @tattly fans, our team is safe but our studio is in the evacuation zone so we won't be able to ship any orders today/tomorrow. #sorry — Tina Roth Eisenberg (@swissmiss) October 30, 2012

A spokesperson for Chelsea-based social prototyping startup Quirky told Betabeat that the company's basement is currently flooded and they've got no power, but the site is up and running. We've also reached out to two other companies with major facilities, Shapeways and Makerbot, and will update if/when we get more details.

Venrock partner Marissa Campise has been posting some pretty amazing pics of the damage downtown:

That's not good. (via @Marissa)

Meanwhile, those with power are pitching in. Local Response CEO Nihal Mehta announced, "dear NYC: looks like the @LocalResponse office (28/6th) has power + internet + water. tweet or email at nihal at localresponse if u need it!" A followup tweet suggests it's quite the happening hotspot:

Caption: "power + pingpong = hurricane party @ LocalResponse HQ"

Om Malik sends warm thoughts eastward, via a blog post titled, "For my friends and New York – stay strong":

At every corner is a flashback. And there are friends – so many of them. Some who I grew up as a kid. Others who I just met a few months ago. And many who I work along side every day. How can I not be worries about them as the city gets submerged in water from the angry sea.

But it is New York. It will get back on its feet. It always does. Because if it doesn’t then what’s the point. Stay strong my friends. Stay stronger New York!

UPDATE 1: Looks like Squarespace having data center issues, as well. From the company blog come reports of flooding in their data center:

Unfortunately, this means that Squarespace will be offline soon (our estimate being at 12PM today). Be assured that while this will impact our availability, there is no chance of data loss or any other permanent effects. We have simply run out of power, backup power, and cannot access our fuel in a flooded basement.

UPDATE 2: Good news from Shapeways. A spokesperson tells Betabeat:

We just got word that the factory in LIC was totally untouched by the storm. We're also happy to report that our servers and machines are now powered backup.

Perry Chen has also checked in:

kickstarter office closed w no power but many of us are online. if you need help from us today pls be patient thnx!

— perry chen (@perrychen) October 30, 2012

UPDATE 3: Betabeat has learned from Betaworks CEO John Borthwick that the firm's office is closed but dry (despite flooding in the general vicinity). However, Mr. Borthwick himself is dealing with the storm's aftermath. "My family and i are bailing a foot of water out of my kitchen," he told us.

We also talked to Livestream CEO Max Haot, who's still on the West Coast. "The power actually went out during the night... we actually have backup power that is provided by the building, by generators on the roof, and that still is what is powering operations there." Hence, they were able to keep the #SandyCam running. Mr. Haot estimates they got at least 400,000 unique viewers throughout the day, and Livestream was also the first media outlet on the scene of the collapsed building in Chelsea.

Like many tech companies, Livestream's data center is facing floodwaters. "They've lost power as well, as has everybody south of 34th Street." They've got about a hundred hours of backup fuel, so Livestream hasn't felt any impact on their core servers, but it could become a headache if their data center doesn't get more fuel and the power supply doesn't come back online sometime soon.

Yesterday, Mr. Haot added, the company was able to run its sales and customer support operations just fine, with New York-based employees working from home. Today, however, "most of these guys have now lost power and are now MIA because they're dealing with their own families and their own issues" and Livestream's VOIP provider is having issues. So business operations aren't quite back up and running just yet. All in all, though, Mr. Haot seemed relatively upbeat about how Livestream was weathering the weather.

Update 4: We caught up with Makerbot CEO Bre Pettis to find out how the company had fared. Their offices and manufacturing facilities in downtown Brooklyn (at 87 3rd Avenue and 314 Dean Street) escaped unscathed, though Mr. Pettis admitted, "we're going to have to put everything back together, because we put everything up on tables, just in case there was flooding.

Their workshop by the Gowanus had a closer call: "The water basically came right up to our door and then receded." Next time, the Makerbot team plans to have sandbags at the ready. "We got lucky--the folks down the street were all pumping out their basements today," Mr. Pettis added.

Also, it seems Twitter took in the Gizmodo team in their time of troubles:

Big thanks to @cpen and @twitter for letting me and fellow #sandy refugee @samfbiddle use their internet.

— joemfbrown (@joemfbrown) October 30, 2012

 

Betabeat will be updating this post on a rolling basis with any new information from the city's startups. Please email tips@betabeat with any details about how you or your fellow tech types are coping. 

The cause for celebration was two-fold. The first was showing off demos from its inaugural class of 20 girls, who represented all five boroughs and some disarmingly ambitious ideas. (We're still scratching our head at Cora Frederick's plan to use data mining and machine learning to classify tumors.) The second was to announce an audacious new goal: to train one million girls in computer science by 2020, starting with a national expansion outside New York City next year.

The nonprofit organization, founded by former deputy public advocate Reshma Saujani and run by former Jumo managing director Kristen Titus, offers teenage girls an eight-week, full-time education in robotics, web design, and mobile development, with mentorship from engineers and executives at Twitter, Google, ZocDoc, Gilt Groupe, and more. In fact, Ms. Saujani noted last night, CEO Dick Costolo volunteered Twitter's first philanthropic donation to Girls Who Code, although she politely declined to specify the dollar amount.

On stage, Ms. Saujani pointed out that of the 8 million girls in high school right now, only 3,769 took the AP Computer Science exam. What's more, only 0.3 percent of female high school students decide to major or minor in computer science. But after this summer's session concluded, all 20 girls committed to studying computer science--a small, but integral step toward filling the 1.4 million tech jobs that expected to open up by the year 2020. "That pipeline begins in high school," she told the crowd gathered between the blank screens and buzzing monitors that make-up the floor of the stock exchange after hours.

Girls Who Code sponsors Jack Dorsey and Chris Hughes, who also supported Ms. Saujani's 2010 bid for a Congressional seat, weren't able to make it to the party. But plenty of founders and technologists flocked to the feel-good event, including Wordpress founder Matt Mullenweg, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, and General Assembly cofounder Matthew Brimer, just in from a conference in Dublin (one of the few cities without its own GA, judging by the startup's rapid expansion). Also in attendance were Foursquare's lead iPhone engineer Anoop Ranganath, Raptor Ventures VC William Peng, former ICM prodigy Kate Lee, New York City's chief digital officer Rachel Haot, Ms. Saujani's husband and LocalResponse founder Nihal Mehta, and Alex Taub, head of biz dev at Dwolla.

On stage, Twitter engineer Sara Haider and Twitter program manager Olivia Watkins, who closely mentored the girls, praised the program's many virtues. But nowhere was the upside more evident than in a speech from 15-year-old Julia Geist from Brooklyn, who recounted her transformation from the shy kid who liked physics into what Ms. Saujani called a "change agent" for her family of five siblings.

"I learned about Girls Who Code from my librarian, who noticed that I spent all of my days and much of my lunch time on the computer at the library," Ms. Geist told the beaming crowd. "I quickly learned everything from how to build mobile apps to becoming a master of user experience to building video games in Javascript." Ms. Geist is currently working on three separate freelance web development projects and teaching her dad how to code. "He is now working to become an IT professional to replace his substitute custodian job. My sisters are next on the list. Some say I’m a natural coder, but I say I’m lucky to have been a part of Girls Who Code."

For anyone inspired to donate after hearing Ms. Geist, or other equally as moving teenage technologists, there were Square devices on hand to swipe donations right from the NYSE.

Even without a horde of face-palming stock traders, the floor of the exchange is still an intoxicating milieu. Proximity to all those literal levers to the public markets were irresistible--and stern instructions from the guard not to push any elevator buttons didn't help. Mr. Newmark himself seemed tempted toward a little mischief, although he cautioned that anything untoward should only be performed with the benefit of a mask. "Did you see the Batman movie?" he explained, covering his mouth like the villainous Bain. Mr. Newmark was in the midst of this twice or thrice annual trips to New York. "I tend to stay near the K-Mart downtown and that’s where I shop," he said, admitting to a little anxiety about leaving his customer service post. "I’ve been offline for, what, two hours now? People will be nervous."

Luckily, we faired better than TechCrunch co-editor Alexia Tsotsis, who got kicked out the NYSE for an offhand joke involving spilled liquids and Facebook stock manipulation.

The juxtaposition of tech and Wall Street was as symbiotic as we've ever seen it. A Credit Suisse exec eagerly passed Ms. Saujani his congratulations and business card. While waiting in the lobby, we chatted up a Goldman analyst (who has her own startup, natch). Surely, the release of Greg Smith's tell-all must be a startup recruiter's dream? Not so much, she said with a shrug, describing life inside the House of Lloyd yesterday as "pretty normal."

Towards the end of the presentations, Ms. Saujani pulled an Oprah, distributing presents from President Barack Obama to all the girls who joined her on stage. "We have signed letters for each of you! It’s better than One Direction and Justin Bieber, right? I think so too!" she said with pride. "I dunno, Bieber would've been good?" a fellow audience member quipped next to us. "Pandemonium in the stock exchange!"

Thanks to the startup scene's growth spurt, New York City has not been short on well-intentioned initiatives to right the ratio and close the gap for tech talent. Girls Who Code seems to get many of the basics right: The organization reaches out underserved students, who defy the pattern-recognition that plagues the tech industry and its financiers. It also addresses the problem early, and offers sustained training with a practical bent toward employment.

"I wish I had majored in computer science," Ms. Saujani told Betabeat in a trading booth after the speeches. "I wish I could go home and build a mobile app on immigration and undocumented students--build an app on 'Stop and Frisk.' But I’m also taking lessons from the girls and I don’t think it’s too late for me to learn how to code either." Girls Who Code, she said, is an example of the type of initiatives she wants to spearhead in her campaign to become Public Advocate in 2013. "I was talking at some of the community colleges, like if you can teach 15-year-old girls how to code, you can teach adults how to code. And there are so many jobs that are open," she said, noting the 50,000 new jobs added in mobile development.

During the program, Ms. Saujani added, visits to Gilt Groupe and ZocDoc piqued the girls' interest. "I think a lot of them thought initally, I want to be a doctor and didn’t realize the connection between healthcare and technology, and medicine and technology."

On our way out, we asked Ms. Guest, who received her first job offer after the Girls Who Code graduation at Google's Chelsea outpost, where she'd like to work. While Google, Gilt Groupe, and Twitter feel "like a second home," she said, "My dream is to start my own company." Oh man, just wait 'til Peter Thiel hears about her!

In seven hours, he managed to raise $5 million.

The press has focused on high-profile attendees like Deepak Chopra and Russell Simmons, as well as the turnout from the upper echelons of Wall Street. Indeed, Republicans would probably love to make stumping in front of an $18,000 piece of driftwood this season's $400 haircut. But under the radar, New York techies also showed up--and paid up!--for the Democratic cause, and the ancillary bonus of getting to watch Questlove bang on some drums.

For all their willingness to weigh in on what the federal government is doing wrong, direct party affiliation isn't something one hears that often in tech circles. (There are exceptions: TheLadders CEO Marc Cenedella planned on running for a Republican Senate seat; Chris Dixon wondered yesterday if he lived in a "left-wing bubble.") It can be hard to tell, for example, whether an anti-SOPA advocate is a Libertarian or a Democrat. Or whether a disruption-chasing venture capitalist might be a fiscal conservative who votes GOP.

So it was interesting to see names like FirstMark Capital's Lawrence Lenihan (alongside AHAlife's Shauna Mei) on the host list for the dinner. Ryan Williams, a server engineer for Foursquare, checked-in on his company's app to the $1,000-a-ticket show at ABC Carpet, along with Birchbox's Dan Zeehandelaar. Others in attendance included Potential.ly founder Joel Smernoff, along with 212 Media's Jeremy Goldberg, a sizable contingent from LocalResponse, Cava Capital general partner Geoff Schneider, kbs+ Ventures senior associate Taylor Davidson and his fiance Sloane Berrent, Lippe Taylor's VP of digital, who got points for her first check-in with the POTUS. On Ms. Mei's Facebook page last week, Turntable.fm's Billy Chasen and investor Jay Levy also expressed interest in attending.

"[Obama's] personality resonates with all of us," LocalResponse CEO Nihal Mehta told Betabeat by email. "He kicked off last night's 20-minute speech by saying he has more twitter followers than Aziz Ansari."

He really said this in his speech. Unreal. “@questlove: POTUS to @AzizAnsari: I got more twitter followers than you man!”

— Aziz Ansari (@azizansari) March 2, 2012

Part of the techie turnout may have been orchestrated by Mr. Mehta's girlfriend Reshma Saujani, who currently serves as deputy advocate for special initiatives for the New York City Public Advocate's office and helped organize the fundraising event. When Ms. Saujani campaigned for a Congressional seat in 2010, she ran on an innovation/entrepreneurship platform that drew supporters like Jack Dorsey, of Twitter and Square, and Facebook's Chris Hughes. Ms. Saujani, who introduced the president, was able to raise "well over $1 million," said Mr. Mehta.

So does this mean we'll be seeing more political activism from New York's tech crowd as November draws near? Maybe more like political startups. "The threat of SOPA and PIPA activated a lot of political interest in many people involved in technology and entrepreneurship," said Mr. Davidson, from kbs+ ventures (who teaches a mean Skillshare class on financial modeling). "I also believe that it created a lot of ideas for 'political tech' entrepreneurs. Many political campaigns have been very savvy in using web technology and communities to activate voters, but there is still a lot to be done beyond activation, and I think that technology entrepreneurs will build solutions to tackle many of those problems," he said, adding, "Building solutions to help people be involved and engaged in government is more important than a particular entrepreneur's political affiliation."

Mr. Mehta also mentioned SOPA/PIPA, but in the context of listing Obama policies he thought attracted tech types. "New York tech will definitely come out and support the President given his stance against SOPA/PIPA, loan forgiveness programs for entrepreneurs, and constant encouragement of innovations in every speech (e.g. American cars are the leaders globally with 55 MPG saving the average US family $8-10k/year)," said Mr. Mehta. "His numerous references to creating the next steve jobs, and the necessity to innovate, 'What Americans do.'"

Any Romney supporters care to share a differing opinion? You know what to do: tips@betabeat.com.

Any excuse to post photos of @stanleythepuppy

LocalResponse announced some big news today in the way of every startup's favorite word: monetization! (Well, it might be your least favorite if your name rhymes, say, with Shmumblr). The advertising platform, which helps marketers make good on real-time consumer intent by mining mentions and location-enabled check-ins on Twitter, Foursquare, Gowalla and the like, is now offering an "analytics and action platform for marketers."

In the past, LocalResponse has managed fly-over state friendly campaigns for clients like Walgreens. Consumers who checked-in to Walgreens on Foursquare or merely tweeted "I'm at Walgreens" or even "I'm going to Walgreens," got a tweet back directly from the store offering promotions and coupons. Click-through rates for that that kind of offering are more than 50 percent, a good 20 times that of other direct response marketing campaigns, says the startup.

The secret sauce of LocalResponse's approach to social media deluge is that the company is able to analyze both implicit and explicit check-ins. "No one is using semantic NLP (natural language parsing) to extract the implicit 'check-in' or presence—in fact we have a patent pending on this process," LocalResponse CEO Nihal Mehta told Betabeat. "Sprout Social, Tweetdeck, SocialFlow all operate on generic mentions, instead of 'presence' like LocalResponse does," he added. Data from Foursquare, who is also trying get in on the ad game, is only two percent of LocalResponse's data set. "The vast majority comes from people mentioning they are at places or doing things on Twitter itself!" he said.

That level of analysis also helps LocalResponse target mobile display ads based on a consumer's intent and even "relevant sentiment." Intuit, another client, used LocalResponse to send TurboTax banner ads to people who kvetched about doing taxes on Twitter. In that case, they improved ten fold on your average online display ad, with a 1 percent click-through.

Betabeat was most intrigued by the company's ability to make use of a "competitive check-in." Does that if you check into Burger King, McDonald's (another LocalResponse client) will send you a coupon?? "If you check into Burger King, we would NOT have McDonald's send you a tweet back. We feel this is spammy to the user," Mr. Mehta assured us by email. "Instead we would retarget that check-in across mobile/web display. In other words, if you publicly check into BK, the next time you go to the web, don't be surprised to see a banner ad for McD's!"

The move towards an analytics dashboard doesn't surprise us.  Last April when LocalResponse was pivoting away from Buzzd, a city guide that used social media to show you what was trending, Mr. Mehta told Betabeat, "Our data is more valuable to local merchants and brands than to the consumer."

So does this mean the dashboard will be a bigger part of the company's long-term revenue strategy? "YES of course," Mr. Mehta responded, emphatically. "And that is why we are launching the Pro Dashboard, where brands and agencies want to see all the data on their customers, across gender/DMA/age/klout/etc. and then utilize the tool to respond back to them on a 1:1 basis."

Expect more advertisers to join the likes of LocalResponse's impressive client list: Audi, Coca-Cola, Dell, Estee Lauder, FedEx, General Electric, General Mills, General Motors, H&M, Hersheys, Kmart, Lowes, McDonald’s, NBC-Universal, Pepsi, Pizza Hut, Verizon, and Walgreens.

In the meantime, you can probably catch Mr. Mehta doing "the Stanford swivel" at Soho House or palling around with LocalResponse's inimitable office furball, @stanleythepuppy.

Nihal Mehta

Betabeat is pretty sick of "big data" as a buzzword, but the amount of personal information that consumers are throwing up on the web is staggering. Facebook has had some success advertising against this information, Twitter less so.

LocalResponse was born out of the ashes of Buzzd, a city guide that mashed up Foursquare and Twitter to help users find local hotspots. Founder Nihal Mehta learned a valuable lesson in defeat, and this week raised a $5 million round from new investors Cava Capital, Vodafone Ventures, Advancit Capital and Progress Ventures, along with its existing investors

Buzzd was a consumer facing platform, but failed to attract enough users. LocalResponse, by contrast, take the massive amount of public data being shared on Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, and turns that into ad inventory.

"Our Verizon campaign has been one of the top performers," said Mr. Mehta, who chatted with Betabeat by phone earlier this week. "When we see people tweeting out 'AT&T suck' or 'Singular is killing me' we can respond to that with a tweet from Verizon's account offering them a $100 discount to switch carriers. That's relevant, contextual advertising and the conversion rates have been off the charts."

For now the only insight we have into performance comes from Mr. Mehta himself. But LocalResponse has secured 40 clients and some very big names: Verizon, Coca Cola, McDonalds, Walgreens and more. Several of these companies have run repeated campaigns on the service, a sign that they are seeing a positive return on their investment.

"The click through rates on promoted tweets are still quite low. By comparison our campaign for Walgreens saw a 60% click through rate."

Back in August LocalResponse acquired social TV startup Philo, which added a number of engineers to their team, including their current CTO, Jessica Lowe. The new funding will be used to build our sales and marketing and to deepen the R&D the company is doing on semantic analysis.

The key to keeping their service from being spammy is only sending consumers messages that are highly relevant in terms of time, place and sentiment. LocalResponse is responding to a user's status update, tweet or check in, which gives them a great context to target their add. And because most people have these services set up with push notifications, they don't have to be in the specific app to get the message, they only need to own a smartphone, which often provides a great picture of their location. "SMS is a powerful and ubiquitous service," Mr. Mehta said.

To prove their point, LocalResponse pointed to a campaign Manhattan restaurant Baohaus, which was sending out tweets to promote its business, but seeing little response. When they started running a LocalResponse campaign, they got 40,000 retweets, and 340 people saw their discount offering for every person that sent a tweet.

Nihal Mehta

"Things move so fast in the mobile space these days," says Vic Singh, founder of the mobile photo sharing app, Tracks. "I've spent more time as a venture capitalist investing in the space, than I have as an entrepreneur. But the truth is if you're not building something yourself, and seeing what works on the ground, you're going to get left behind."

Tracks is a social publishing service that lets users create and share photos in multiple distinct groups, or tracks. Singh is one of the many residents at Local Response headquarters in Chelsea to wear a number of hats. As a founding partner of ENIAC Ventures, he has also invested in startups like SpotOn, which share the same space and, more recently, the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt. "We practiced our pitches on one another and perfected our schwag. Whenever I have a problem, whether its email marketing or my analytics platform, I turn to the other companies in the space."

The desks just a few feet away belong to AppFund, a mobile incubator and seed fund. Brett Martin, founder of Sonar, helped to launch a few companies with this team before leaving to start his own. Sonar, which debuted at Disrupt, eventually became one of three finalists for the grand prize. "We're all in here sort of chewing over the same ideas and that makes for an incredibly productive environment."

Martin points to Nihal Mehta, a partner at ENIAC and founder of Local Response. "My last company was trying to solve the problem that Local Response is working on right now," says Martin. "And my current venture, Sonar, is really looking at a lot of the same issues that Nihal's previous company, Buzzd, was trying to crack."

SpotOn CEO Gauri Manglik says the informal relationship and proximity to her investors is one of the best things about working out of the space. "Having an email relationship with a backer is one thing, but when I have a question for the guys at ENIAC, I just turn around and yell." SpotOn gives users a simple way to rate venues and recommends where to go based on a user's profile and social graph.

Like Betaworks, there is an enormous amount of data and insight being collected in a single place around the theme of mobile location and sharing. "The companies influence each other in some way, shape or form; and completely subconsciously--just from overhearing phone calls or running into common investors," says Nihal Mehta. Issues like the "ghost town" of a young consumer app or the best way to leverage the APIs of big companies become a shared knowledge base. "Mobile is moving at a lighting pace, and when you share a space, you find yourself evolving even faster."

The service debuted for local merchants and today it announced the second half of its business, a platform that will allow big brands to target users with deals based on this data. “We’re effectively using the “check-in” as a proxy for behavioral and location-based targeting,” says Nihal Mehta, CEO and Co-founder. “There’s finally significant reach and scale in this medium, and we’re excited to connect brands and agencies to it.”

It's also important because LocalResponse is free for small business, but will charge national brands. Kathy Leake, former founder and CFO of Media6Degrees, will lead the branded efforts as President.

LocalResponse is a pivot from the folks at Buzzd, who built a city guide based on the same concept, aggregating data from different services to help users figure out what locations were trending nearby or relevant to them. Rather than compete head on with the consumer facing check in services like Foursquare and Facebook, the company is now trying to monetize that activity by making it useful to the enterprise.

“Our data is more valuable to local merchants and brands than to the consumer,” says Mehta. So for example Webster Hall would use Localresponse to see everyone who was checking in and perhaps offer up a free drink to users who shouted out the concert to friends or public feeds.

In a smart move, LocalResponse went beyond the standard check in services when building out their network of data points. A check in on Foursquare requires me to select a specific venue first, it's explicit about the location. Folks can also attach location data to Twitter posts, but more often users just provide a status update on those two services. So in addition to reading obvious locations, LocalResponse tries to analyze natural language from simple phrases like, “I’m heading to Madison Square Garden!” and extract useful information about where users are.

The danger behind a service like this is that users will get fed up with a flood of push notifications about deals, especially from big brands, which won't be offering as unique a location based experience. So Localresponse has decided not to send more than one message per day from its advertisers and just one message per week from any specific brand or business. The more accurate and timely the offers, the less chance users will begin to experience stalker syndrome.