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.

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.

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 weekend I was alerted to stay away from Quechup, a sketchy social networking site. (Thanks Mike @ ConverStations!)

Here’s how it works: You receive an invite from a friend asking to join them on Quechup, similar to how you’d be invited to MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc. If you’re not careful, Quechup will then wrap its tentacles around your personal address book and spam all your contacts with unsolicited invites.

Quechup being evil is old news — I’m posting about it because this is a fine example of bloggers banding together and using the power of social media to stunt the propagation of spammy practices.