Who most effectively capitalized upon — or helped us to understand — social media in 2007? Below is my round-up, in no particular order. Naturally, I solicited the opinions of friends and colleagues to help build this list.

iJustine (AKA Justine Ezarik)

Through the use of a wireless webcam, Justine Ezarik began broadcasting her life 24/7 on Justin.tv in May. But it was Justine’s short video about her 300-page iPhone bill that skyrocketed her to mainstream fame and significantly impacted a global telecom’s billing process. iJustine is a new form of celebrity — one that is 100% born and evolved online.

Jeremiah Owyang

Few humans “get” social media like Jeremiah Owyang, Senior Analyst of Social Computing at Forrester Research. With his deep level of insight and commitment to sharing knowledge, Jeremy is the guy all of us web culturists want to become. My friend (and social media guru) Greg Swan notes that Jeremy is great at “bridging the gap between social media and research data … and making himself accessible.” The accessible part couldn’t be more true — despite his schedule and work responsibilities, Jeremy is always just an e-mail (or tweet) away.

danah boyd

As a blogger, researcher and PhD student in the School of Information at Berkeley, danah boyd is our society’s foremost thinker on the subject of presentation of self — specifically in the context of social networks and emerging mediums. I saw danah speak twice at SxSW 2007 and was thoroughly impressed by the size and computing capacity of her brain, beneath those furry Ewok hats she likes to wear.

Ron Paul

Yes, somehow a 71-year-old caucasian male made the list. Seriously, no 2008 presidential campaign has shown a greater command of the power of social media than Ron Paul’s. He’s amassed (or, as some might argue, manipulated) quite a large presence inside online publics such as Digg, Technorati, YouTube, Facebook and Reddit — either he’s surrounded with very web-savvy campaign staff, or his libertarian views align more closely with the type of people who are actively engaged online. (It could be both.) Almost everywhere I turn within the social media landscape, Ron Paul’s name pops up. There is something to be said for name recognition like that.

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Tell me who I left out! Use the comments section to nominate your 2007 Social Media Superstars.

(Photo by cbrittj via Flickr)

Too often, Des Moines doesn’t get the respect it deserves for being a cool city. For decades we were the butt of jokes, and deservedly so — the town was bleak and uninteresting up until three or four years ago. Something seemingly changed overnight: vibrant nightlife, restaurants, shops and creative subcultures began to emerge and thrive.

Adam Nagourney of The New York Times recently took note of Des Moines during his journey to Iowa to cover the parade of presidential candidates. (And in the travel section, no less!) I was thrilled to see shout-outs in the article for some of my favorite DSM hang-outs: Azalea, a spectacular downtown restaurant, and Smash, a t-shirt shop in the gentrified East Village area.

I’m proud to call Des Moines home, and excited to grow Lava Row here.

Read: In the Spotlight, Ready for Its Close-Up by Adam Nagourney (New York Times)

I manage ad campaigns for more than one client inside Facebook, so I’ve used different credit cards to make the purchases. Yesterday, a client told me she was finding all sorts of strange charges on her card, and after digging into the issue, we discovered that Facebook had been billing her for ALL Lava Row client campaigns.

Not good.

During the setup process of Social Ads, Facebook gives you the option to use an existing credit card already associated with your account, or to enter new c.c. information. (Evidence below!) By entering new info at the exact point of purchase, you kind of assume the charges will go to that card, correct? Apparently not.

What’s odd is that Facebook allows you to associate multiple cards in your account settings (shown in the screen grab above), but I received this message from their customer support team:

Thanks for your email. Unfortunately, we don’t currently have a system set up that can bill more than one card per account at once. We sincerely apologize for the confusion. If you wish to switch credit cards, you currently need to pause all your ads, pay off the remaining balance, and then remove the old credit card from the Account. We hope to create a system where billing multiple cards is possible in the near future.

WTF? Let’s recap: I can save more than one card in my account, but Facebook tells me they can’t bill to more than one. Then, I enter correct, new credit card information at the point of purchase, and they decide to charge a completely different card — one used for previous orders. Even though they gave me a choice during ad setup, and there’s no verbiage to indicate otherwise.

Lesson learned: Don’t try to manage multiple campaigns for multiple customers across multiple payment methods on any platform. Charge it all to your company card, then invoice the client. This is probably common sense to most businesses, but hey — I’m in Year One, making mistakes and getting smarter because of them.

Still, the situation is unacceptable. Facebook: You just gotta charge the right card, and you can’t roll out system-wide changes without addressing user interface.

UPDATE, December 14, 2007: Facebook has removed the charges from the wrong card and applied them to the correct card. Excellent.

I hate using the term “viral video” when putting together social media proposals for clients. Am I guilty of using it? Yes, absolutely — but recently I’m doing my best to stay away from the label. “Viral” should never be promised or assumed. It’s a goal to be achieved by creating video content good enough to be passed from person to person on a large scale.

There is no exact formula for a successful viral video campaign, but it doesn’t hurt to try the following ingredients:

1. Be funny. People like to laugh, and share laughs.
2. Be outrageous, shocking or just plain bizarre. Remember, there’s just as much white noise online (if not more so) than traditional media.
3. Leverage subject matter or concepts already popular in Web culture. This helps you cast a wider net.

Time for a case study. About a year ago, when I worked in the advertising agency world, I helped create a video for Kum & Go featuring three guys obsessed with setting off the biggest Mentos and Diet Coke explosion of all time. This allowed us to tap into the already large volume of content, interest and traffic surrounding the “Mentos + Diet Coke = Boom” theme.

The video sat on YouTube for 10 months, receiving over 13,000 views and 50 comments — good, but not great. This October it was posted to Break, where it blew up immediately with nearly half a million views in 48 hours. (As it stands today, the video has had over 1.5 million viewers and 900 comments.)

So what did we learn? The YouTube audience is mainstream, while Break is niche (mostly teenage and college males). Niche worked best in getting a large number of views, not to mention engagement in the comments section.

So go forth and create, and don’t forget to entertain.