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.

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.

On Friday, October 19th, I took part in a panel discussion about legal and ethical issues in new media along with professional blogging coach Mike Sansone and digital experts from the Des Moines Register and Meredith Corp. The event was part of the continuing ed program for Drake University’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. We talked a lot about blogs, wikis and how old media is adapting itself to remain relevant.

If you’re interested in listening to the whole thing, there’s a podcast available here. (iTunes required!)

Let’s face facts: E-mail just sucks as a business communications tool.

Way too many people get copied on way too many irrelevant messages. It’s a distraction. Context gets lost. Monstrous file attachments hog valuable server space and bandwidth. And some employees (typically the ones without backbone) use e-mail as a crutch to make their voices heard or send out commands to their fiefdoms, when face-to-face would be more effective.

Today in the Des Moines Register, we were mentioned in an article about the use of social networking within the workplace as an alternative to e-mail. (Except they left out our company name, Lava Row.) Lots of organizations are creating small networks within Twitter to improve communication and collaboration, and — even better — they’re getting it done quicker. BusinessWeek recently featured a Twitter vs. e-mail debate, which we encourage everyone to check out.

Google just acquired Jaiku (a web-based app similar to Twitter) and we highly suspect they’ll be mashing it into their office productivity suite soon. So, what creative things have you done in your office to improve communication?

This social media-friendly press release about the 2008 Ford Focus popped up in my Twitter friends stream this morning. I love it. Ford has neatly packaged together YouTube video, Flickr photos, RSS feeds, sharing options and even tagging suggestions. Applications like this allow information / content to get spread further (and quicker) than the standard “FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE” Word doc.

When reaching out to the social fabric of the Web, what’s your organization’s P.R. strategy?

Apparently NBC’s Today Show is now Twittering.

Yesterday I received a notice that the Twitter user Todayshow was following my feed, which is a gentle way of asking “Hey, can you follow my feed, too?” This is a great example of a large organization that wants to leverage Twitter to promote what they’re up to, but hasn’t quite grasped how to do it properly.

Instead of accusing the Today Show of social network corporate invasion, I thought I’d offer up some advice on how to improve their stream. (This can apply to any organization interested in using Twitter.)

1.) Don’t just force your blog’s RSS feeds into your stream. The (insert post title) and (insert url) tweets quickly become non-human, boring and expected. This makes it seem like you’re only using Twitter as a way to auto-syndicate your blog’s content, and that’s not the stuff Twitter users are into. Twitter-ers like conversation.

2.) Keep the tweets under 140 characters. For instance, we don’t know what this means: “Super Shea and Marvelous Mercer: This morning, Meredith interviewed a very inspirational young woman…” If you want us to tune in or watch your online video content, tell us why she’s inspirational and why we should care in less than 140.

3.) Introduce behind-the-scenes stuff and quirky antecdotes. Tell us what Al Roker is doing right now. Does he drink the office coffee or does he bring his own? What’s Willard Scott’s dressing room like? Convince Matt Lauer to personally type a message. Give your Twitter friends some unique stuff that doesn’t exist in your other communication channels.

4.) Try to keep the tweetcount manageable for followers: Between five and ten per day, please. Only Scoble can get away with more.

5.) Consider the Twitter demographics: They are much more likely to consume technology news, so push tech content in your feed.

To sum up, social mediums must be utilized properly in order to be effective. Signing off.

The founder of Pandora.com will be speaking at the Fourth Street Theatre in Des Moines this Thursday evening. The event starts at 7:00 p.m. and is free to the public, so drop by if you’d like to hear stories about the Music Genome Project and surviving the dot-com implosion. See you there!

Click for directions (Enter through Java Joe’s)