Today StockTwits announced (release here) that it had raised a $3m Series B financing led by Foundry Group and returning investor True Ventures. For us, StockTwits represents a unique opportunity to leverage the increasingly active conversation taking place on (and off) the Twitter platform around stocks and markets.  We’ve witnessed in other investments the power of 3^rd party networks to drive the scale and reach of new businesses and we believe StockTwits represents a huge opportunity to harness the Twitter community’s ongoing conversation around stocks and investing.

If you’ve ever tagged a tweet with the $ tag or tweeted a stock symbol using that tag you’ve participated in the StockTwits conversation.  StockTwits uses the familiar Twitter microblogging format (140 characters) and allows users to seamlessly cross-post from and to their Twitter stream. Users can tag their Twitter posts with the $ tag to be picked up in StockTwits, use the StockTwits web interface or download the StockTwits desktop for even greater functionality (we’d highly recommend the desktop client – you can get it here if you don’t already have it). Below is a screenshot of the desktop client to give you a sense of what’s available. This view can be customized to follow specific tickers or topics as they’re mentioned. You can also see StockTwitsTV on the right half of the desktop – look for more programming as we roll out additional content in the coming months on the StockTwits Network.

But can stock advice really be offered in 140 characters or less? The answer is a resounding yes. There is a large and extremely active conversation taking place in StockTwits (to get a sense of it click over to the StockTwits site and watch the dataflow). And large trading organizations are taking notice. The NASDAQ recently released an iPhone application that features StockTwits data (see the screenshot to the left). Look for other StockTwits integrations to be announced soon as the company uses this new round of funding to accelerate its pace of development as well as its work with partners. You’ll also see the company releasing additional features in its desktop client and on its site as well as rolling out new data features and the ability for users to create custom data feeds from the StockTwits datastore.

Of course great investments require great people. And we couldn’t be more excited about working with StockTwits founders Howard Linzdon (whom we’ve known for years) and Soren Macbeth. We’re joining Roger Ehrenberg of IA Capital Partners and Tony Conrad of True Ventures in this investment – two experienced entrepreneurs and venture capitalists with whom we’re extremely pleased to be teaming up.

Look for more announcements about the company soon.

As we previously reported, we’ve recently invested in a computer vision company called Organic Motion. This is another one of our Human Computer Interaction investments.  To give you an idea of one of the markets they are targeting, check out the these marketing materials designed for the defense industry. In it, you can see some specific use cases that the company can deliver today.  (Be patient, it’s a 5mb file, so it takes a bit to view).

Our company Oblong was recently the subject of the new Bloomberg Series, Innovators.  If you want to see 30 minutes of great TV about innovation and entrepreneurship focused around our portfolio company, it’s a great watch.  They are in episode “Turning Point.”  We are really excited about our partnership with Oblong and all that they’ve accomplished, so we are proud that others are recognizing their successes. 

(As a technical note, we find that in Windows, IE works better than Firefox to view it).

Brad and I were lucky enough to see the Bilski argument at the Supreme Court.  We were both beyond impressed and each wrote about our experience.  Jason’s recap is here.  You can find Brad’s summary here. 

We are hopeful that as a result of this case, business method patents will be forever dead and gone.  Given the tenor and body language of the court, we would be surprised if it turned out any other way.  Perhaps most interesting was the courts’ investigation into software patents, even though that was technically not the issue at hand.  We, individually at the Foundry Group, are not fans of the current ecosystem surrounding software patents and would be happy to see the court take action on this front too. 

We anxiously await the ruling. 

We are pleased to announce our investment in Organic Motion, Inc. The company is based in New York City and is a leading innovator of computer vision and advanced motion capture systems. Organic Motion’s core computer vision technology dramatically increases a computer’s ability to see and understand the motion of humans and other living organisms. The company offers groundbreaking turnkey and customized motion capture systems that utilize its patent-pending breakthrough computer vision technology.

This investment is part of our human computer interaction investment theme, along with previous investments Oblong and Smith and Tinker.

We got excited in Organic Motion after we saw their technology which allows computers to see objects without using the traditional approaches of body suits and or ball markers attached to the subject. The limitations of this approach are significant as tracking is crude because these systems are limited to a number of specific points and a large number of movements can’t be deciphered or tracked. Furthermore, the setup process is time-consuming and costly.

Organic Motion’s solution is the first commercial markerless motion capture system. The company created an advanced system which looks at people in a manner very similar to the way the brain processes human vision. Significantly, the Organic Motion system does this all using off-the-shelf and readily available low cost hardware.

The company already has customers in the retail, military and education markets and was founded by CEO Andrew Tschesnok. Along with President Jonathan Rand, we look forward to a long and rewarding partnership with the company.