Earlier this week, many of us in the Des Moines Twitter community learned about a rip-off of epic proportions: Local web startup SmartyPig had its CSS layout, logo and name carbon-copied by a Romanian company called TrustyPig.

Here is SmartyPig’s website (a legitimate, FDIC-insured company), designed by the legendary HappyCog:

And here is TrustyPig’s blatant rip-off:

A representative from SmartyPig had this to say in their Twitter stream to all their followers:

SmartyPig: B aware of trustypig.com. We are in NO Way affiliated with this Romanian ad outfit. Not sure what they are up to. But they have good taste.

Mike Ferarri, one of SmartyPig’s founders, expressed to me that he didn’t think there was any possible legal recourse since TrustyPig is located in Romania. That’s when the Twitter community decided to take matters into their own hands. I called for the organization of an angry mob. Andy Brudtkuhl got more specific and demanded a brand hijack, an effort which he led and organized with other Twitter users and bloggers.

A brand hijack is basically an orchestrated way to use blogs, SEO and social networks like Twitter and FriendFeed to “hijack” a brand’s placement in search engine listings. Andy further describes it in his blog post from August 11:

A brand hijack is an attempt to infuse a message as related to a brand. Often times companies do this internally or accidentally. Sometimes it starts from an external source. Most of the times it is viral. Rarely it is organized. Our goal is to takeover search results and word of mouth for the TrustyPig brand in order to communicate our message to any of TrustyPig’s potential customers.

Below is a screenshot of how effective Andy’s efforts were:

So this is a perfect example of why every company, including yours, should work their asses off to have brand enthusiasts — loyal customers who will take time out of their own schedules to defend your image.

In the first year that they’ve been in business, SmartyPig has fostered a community of customer evangelists by accomplishing the following:

• Creating an innovative, killer product: An online piggy bank that helps users visualize and share their savings goals while allowing others to contribute.
• Providing amazing customer support.
• Use of a popular social network (Twitter) to engage in real, authentic conversations with their customers. This beats an advertisement any day.

Two days after the brand hijack project began, TrustyPig changed their web design and we declared victory:

Let’s sum this up. By working hard to foster a loyal customer base, SmartyPig ended up spending zero dollars in legal fees when faced with this trademark infringement issue. The Twitter Mob took care of it for them.

Screenshots courtesy of Troy Rutter and Andy Brudtkuhl.

Follow the SmartyPig vs. TrustyPig conversation:
TrustyPig steals SmartyPig website via NerdFlood.com
TrustyPig - A Webjacker Gets Pwned via BlawgIT.com
TrustyPig.com Rips Off SmartyPig.com design via TroyRutter.com
Brand Hijack - Blogging via Getanewbrowser.com
TrustyPig - Social Brand Hijack via Getanewbrowser.com
(More links to conversations can be found on del.icio.us.)

Last fall, Google announced the OpenSocial standard. Let me spend a few moments explaining what exactly that is, and why it will be important to your business in the future.

The OpenSocial movement is based on the belief that users should be able to distribute content across the Web’s many manifestions (blogs, social networks, mobile phones, etc.), as opposed to accessing it only via one central website.

Lots of other companies have joined the movement along with Google: MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo and SixApart, to name a few.

We’ve always thought of the corporate website as THE one-stop destination for all of our prospects and existing customers. With the onset of embeddable YouTube videos and RSS feeds, we saw that if the content is good enough, others will distribute it. OpenSocial is simply the next step of this evolution.

Let’s say you’ve created a little interactive Flash game on your website. It’s branded with your identity, it’s engaging, and you want your visitors to play around with it. Three years ago this was called "sticky" content, thinking that users should be given incentive to "stick around" and come back to websites. Today, OpenSocial allows you to offer that game for anyone to grab and post inside their blog or their personal Myspace/Facebook page. Remember, your customer can also be your distributor.

Another great thing about the OpenSocial movement: If you want your content to easily "snap in" to all of these various spaces, why should your developers have to learn programming languages that are specific to each platform? They could spend hours learning how to develop something inside Facebook, then duplicate that time by re-creating the same initiative for MySpace. That’s a lot of wasted time. OpenSocial gives us a common set of tools - learn it once, apply it everywhere.

Don’t feel like you need to go out and learn everything about the OpenSocial movement today. Just keep it in your web strategy toolbox as your company’s web content evolves. In fact, if you’ve ever read a blog’s RSS feed, embedded a YouTube video, or sent a link to your friend, you’re already a pioneer in this movement!

When developing social media strategy for clients, I often talk about listening before talking. As with any marketing effort, it helps to know the general wants and needs of the customer first, before jumping in.

Traditionally this would take the form of consumer research, surveys or focus groups. Today, with all sorts of social mediums inviting peer-to-peer conversation (such as blogs, wikis, message boards and social networks) companies can listen to what’s being said about them in real-time.

There are many listening / buzz trending tools online, ranging from the free (Google BlogSearch and Twitter) to the high-end (Radian6). One application that has emerged as particularly useful for me recently is the search partnership between Omgili and Google.

Omgili, to put it simply, is a search engine that tracks opinions, discussions and conversations, as opposed to individual websites and pages. At google.omgili.com, you can see how they’ve paired subjective search results (perception, arguments, opinion, sarcasm) with Google’s objective results (facts, raw information).

It’s a nice blend, especially for marketing and PR folk. Just type in your company’s name and click "search both" to see what customers are saying, right now.

Consumer insight like this is invaluable, and it gives your organization an advantage in the long run. The best part: Omgili is a free application that you can start using today.