On Wednesday, February 6th, I’ll be speaking at an IABC Iowa luncheon about various social media goodies and their applications in business. (Hat tip to Mike Sansone for setting up this opportunity.)

Also, the FIRST EVER Des Moines TweetUp will be taking place this Thursday the 7th at Shorty’s, beginning at 5:30 pm. If you’re a Twitter user and you’re in the DSM area, please come join us.

So, where’s Shorty’s? Glad you asked. It’s in the basement of a closed-down grocery store at 208 Court Avenue, downtown. (Here’s a map!) Shorty’s doesn’t have a front door, so you have to enter through the alley south of the building. It’s the best bar in DSM, hands down. Feel free to spread the word, and I’ll see you there.

Lava Row has an opening for a Strategist in Social Media, New Media and Emerging Media. (How’s that for a title?) Responsibilities will include development and execution of strategy for new and existing clients. Candidate should have exceptional verbal/written/human communication skills, huge ideas and an obsession with emerging mediums. 2-3 years of experience in marketing and/or web technology is preferred but not necessary.

Interested? Please read the careers page, then give a shout.

UPDATE 6/9/2008: This position has been filled.

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.

Fellow 515ers Chris Punke and Andy Brudtkuhl have teamed up to create Tech in Iowa — a show that highlights the people, companies and advancements within Iowa’s tech community.

I was invited to participate in the inaugural episode, which can be viewed via the embedded video above, or by heading over to YouTube. In this episode Andy and I discussed social media marketing, viral marketing, and (of course) Whopper Freakout. This is the first of many shows; look for them to be aggregated in the future at TechinIowa.com.

Andy and Chris will surely be accepting ideas for future show content, so feel free to drop them a line on Twitter (@abrudtkuhl and @chrispunke) and make your voice heard.

Scrabulous is one of the more popular add-on applications inside Facebook with over 500,000 users per day. (Count me as one of them.) On January 11th, Hasbro/Mattel — makers of the original Scrabble board game — sent Facebook a cease-and-desist order, citing copyright infringement.

Facebook apps (Scrabulous included) are created by third-party developers on top of the social networking site’s open API. Rajat and Jayant Agarwalla, the Calcutta-based developers who created Scrabulous, are apparently also included in the cease-and-desist letter.

While the copyright infringement issue is certainly understandable, I’m inclined to think that Hasbro/Mattel is more upset that they aren’t profiting from the 500,000+ people who interact with their product every day. Here’s another example of how companies must adapt and adjust their revenue streams to work in tandem with social mediums, and quickly.

If I’m Hasbro/Mattel, I immediately hire the Agarwalla brothers, full-time or via consulting contract, and put them in charge of getting the entire brand portfolio (Battleship, Monopoly, Jenga, Stratego, Clue, etc.) built upon the Facebook API and Google’s OpenSocial movement. I’d use this as an opportunity to create communities around my products, turn my users into distributors, gather data via opt-in methods to learn more about my customers, sell ad space and ultimately promote brand loyalty.

Starting your own video blog couldn’t be easier, because you only need two things:
A $125 pocket-sized Flip Video camcorder and a way to publish your content online. That’s pretty much it. (Oh, and something interesting to say.)

I’m recommending the Flip to all Lava Row clients who are engaged in blogging efforts. Sure, you’re not going to have the polish of a high-end studio production, but you will have immediacy. Today, there’s simply no reason to not have a video component on your blog.

Since my Flip arrived in the mail I’ve been toying around with various publishing tools — Seesmic (still in beta), Blip.tv and ye olde stand-by, YouTube.

Here are some pros and cons:

• Seesmic - There’s been a lot of buzz and early adoption of this app among Twitter users, but I can’t get past the all-Flash interface and FLV format limitations. Converting files to FLVs before uploading is the last thing I want to waste time on.
• YouTube - This is by far the most mainstream and widespread publishing tool, but the audio and video quality is still lacking. I expect it can only get better over time, especially with Google’s war chest behind the R&D.
• Blip.tv - It takes longer to get your file uploaded, but the output quality is very good. (So that settles it, I’m using Blip for my first vlog post!)

I realize there are dozens of other great video-sharing apps out there — which ones have you been successful with?

Everyone sets personal resolutions for the new year, but it doesn’t hurt to do this for your biz as well. I despise PowerPointy words like expectations and objectives, so here’s my List of Things I’m Obsessed With Making Happen for Lava Row in 2008. Each one of these will serve as the basis for future blog posts:

1. Make clients famous. 
2. Get smarter every day.
3. Attack new ways of making money.
4. Open a headquarters. (Lava Row currently operates from various rooms in my house and coffee shops.)
5. Hire another brain.

Simple, digestible and challenging. What are you seeking to accomplish in 2008?

I love how social media has shaped the 2008 presidential campaign and the broadcast of raw information. Tonight I’ll be participating in an exciting citizen journalism experiment: Twittering results and observations live from my caucus precinct, alongside hundreds of other Iowans. Instructions on how to follow these streams can be found in this Townhall.com blog post, or by following @IowaCaucus. As always, my Twitter feed can be accessed @nathantwright.

Twitter is just one of many “as-it-happens” social mediums (YouTube, blogs, vlogs, etc.) that will be heating up with frenzied activity this evening. Google will even be publishing caucus results as they come in, mashed with their mapping technology (the Iowa Caucus Map).

Happy caucusing!

I’m inexcusably late to this meme, but here are my wishes for Twitter improvements in 2008. (Jeremiah and Garrick have already crafted great posts about this topic.)

1.) Let me track conversations.

Today, Chris Brogan asked his Twitter friends if private social networks would be big in 2008.
I want a page that shows me that original tweet, plus all the public responses packaged together in a nice little threaded discussion. Right now we can track individual users, “@responses” to users, and keywords, but not conversations. Somebody please build/hack this.

2.) Let me discover more friends nearby.

Twitter has allowed me to make connections that likely never would have materialized in meatspace. Help me make more, relevant to the zip code I’m currently in. I don’t wish for Twitter to become a “friend-finder” social network, but some slightly-improved location search tools would be nice. At the end of the day, I’m still in charge of who I friend/follow.

3.) Let me broadcast in new spaces.

Imagine a Twitter / bumper sticker mash-up! I’d love to have my Twitter stream scrolling across my bumper or back windshield for everyone to see. Or my office window. What about wearable Twitter? Somebody could easily mod the Scrolling LED Belt Buckle and solder on a Wi-Fi antenna to accomplish this.

4.) Build Twitter micro-networks into airplanes.

These would be specific only to the plane and its passengers: a real-time, Twittervision-style display on a digital screen built into the seat-backs, letting passengers share who they are, where they’re going, and why. Yes! This is awesome, somebody get on this immediately.

5.) Don’t ever get too big.

I hope that Twitter stays light, fluffy and resistant to mainstream appeal.

How do you want Twitter to evolve in 2008?

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.

< INSERT NOMINEE #5 HERE >

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