Huzzah! The location-based social network Foursquare is now available to everyone, everywhere.

I’ve already declared my inevitable Mayorship of the East Village Jimmy John’s. (Who’s going to challenge me?) Others have made their claim on Mars Cafe, which will certainly be a hot spot. I also expect the tweets and check-ins to be flying from Raccoon River during Friday night’s Des Moines Tweetup.

Oh, if you don’t know what Foursquare is yet, please refer back to this earlier post.

So, what do local businesses need to be aware of? First, your customers are going to broadcast that they’re at your location / store / venue. Be ready for this by being findable. Go ahead and add your business as a location before someone does it for you. Earlier I used Foursquare’s web interface to add Lava Row. Just click on “add things” in the top navigation menu and then click “add a new venue.” Fill out the information including address, cross streets, etc., and you’re good to go!

Foursquare is emerging as a platform for businesses to reward their Mayors (people who “check in” the most often) with special deals and discounts – loyalty-based marketing at it’s finest. For more information about Foursquare’s beta advertising platform, check out Foursquare for Businesses.

How will you get creative with your business on Foursquare?

Last night we unleashed Kim (one of the Lava Row summer interns) with a FlipCam on the Des Moines Tweetup crowd at el Bait Shop. She asked everyone what their personal Twitter “A-Ha” moment was.

There were over 100 RSVPs to last night’s tweetup! We aren’t sure what the final number of attendees was, but the crowd was huge, the weather was beautiful, the beer was tasty, and every day I’m continually impressed by Des Moines’ community of innovators, entrepreneurs and unique minds.

What was your personal Twitter “A-Ha” moment? Leave your thoughts in the comments section below. See you at the next tweetup!

The next Des Moines Tweetup will take place at el Bait Shop on Thursday, June 4th at 6:00 pm. Here are five reasons why you should not attend:

Follow the #dmtweetup hashtag on Twitter to stay on top of who’s attending! See you out there!

On Thursday, February 12, Des Moines (along with 100+ cities worldwide) will be hosting a Twestival to raise funds for Charity: Water. The event will be taking place at Mars Cafe (in the Drake neighborhood) from 8:00 pm until 11:00 pm, featuring funky beats by local DJ duo Flatform. A donation of $5.00 will get you free beer from
Olde Main Brewing.

We don’t want our friends at Mars Cafe to violate any fire codes, so we are limited to 80 tickets total. In order to attend, you’ll need to do two things:

1.) Donate $5.00 to Charity: Water here. (Choose Des Moines from the drop-down menu.) Please print your Paypal receipt and bring it with you.

2.) RSVP here and get your e-ticket. We’re doing this to get an accurate headcount.

The Twestival is organized 100% by volunteers in cities around the world and 100% of the money raised from these events will go directly to support charity: water projects.

So come out and meet new friends, have a great time, and support a good cause!

We all know that social networks are incredibly useful for connecting people separated by thousands of miles, but can they actually amplify — and improve — an existing community? For the answer, look no further than what Twitter has done for Des Moines, Iowa, in 2008. Below are five amazing examples.

Let’s make a couple of distinctions before I begin. At the end of the day, these case studies are about humans and the amazing things that happen when they mash their various talents, insights and minds together on a tight, local level. Some refer to this as hyperlocal. Twitter (the technology) was the accelerant that set everything ablaze. Like we tell all of our clients, social media is about people — not websites.

1.) Des Moines TweetUps

One year ago, Andy Brudtkuhl and I were chatting back and forth about the best ways to tap into Des Moines’ undercurrent creative class and somehow bring them all together. We knew these people were out there, hidden in the cracks of our community — maybe they were stuck in meaningless corporate jobs, working from windowless basements, or just out of view. At the time we couldn’t really articulate why, but we just knew it was important for Des Moines to get these minds together. It was also crucial for the mental health of Andy and myself — like many first-year entrepreneurs, we were both working from home at the time, and we needed some social interaction.

And so, in those bitter cold, early months of 2008, we started holding little grassroots events called TweetUps at various watering holes in Des Moines. These gatherings tended to self-organize, and they steadily grew in size from six people (at the first one) to an average of 30-40 people consistently. Over 90 tweeps were in attendance at the most recent ugly-sweater-themed TweetUp in December!

Andy Brudtkuhl, John Pemble and Doug Mitchell. Image courtesy of Impromptu Studio on Flickr.

Jennifer O’Connor and Lacy Brunnette.

But this isn’t really about numbers — the appeal of TweetUps seems to be the quality of the connections and friendships that are established, and the personal and professional opportunities born as a result. I think there are large numbers of people who are turned off by standard “professional networking” events: breakfasts and luncheons filled with lots of salespeople in starched white shirts, trying to stuff their rolodexes with more biz cards and phone numbers.

TweetUps are casual, laid-back, decentralized, and nine times out of 10, there is beer. (This is a big plus.) Nobody has an agenda other than meeting new friends, sharing what they’re passionate about, and learning from others.

The professional benefits of a tight Twitter community are great, but there are also personal impacts. A fellow Des Moines Twitter user mentioned something to me the other night that really stuck with me. He said that he was going on three months holed up in his house, emotionally recovering from a divorce, when he attended the first of many TweetUps. Because of the new network of friends he subsequently made, he gained back some self-confidence, purpose, drive, and happiness. That is significant. That is powerful. Find me a professional breakfast club that can claim something like this. You won’t be able to.

For me, social networks like Facebook are great for connecting me to friends from my previous life, but Twitter connects me with people I should have known my whole life.

2.) Amazing events: Des Moines BarCamp 2008, Highlight Midwest, Ignite Des Moines

As the local tech crowd on Twitter grew larger, more vocal, and better connected, plans for Des Moines’ second BarCamp were hatched. In fact, the event was promoted so well, some folks came all the way from Kansas City to attend. These new connections and conversations led to the formation of Highlight Midwest 2008, a one-of-a-kind unconference that celebrated entrepreneurs and startups from all over Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska. “Flyover Country” now has a greater sense of purpose and a much louder voice.

Des Moines’s Twitter community also put together the city’s first Ignite event, which I’ve recapped here. Summary: Some pretty cool events happened due to some really smart people getting connected. One year ago, none of them knew each other, and that’s a shame.

3.) Chris Pirillo, Sarah Lacy and Gary Vaynerchuk visit Des Moines

Without the power of the Twitter community, these influential web superstars, authors, ass-kickers, bloggers (whatever you want to call them) may have never set foot in our city. How else would we show up on their radars? Okay, Chris Pirillo is from here and has family here, but local tweeps sure generated a ton of interest and buzz about his visits last spring. Local Twitter users and Vaynerchuk fans mobilized on Gary’s message boards and pleaded with him to bring the thunder to Des Moines on his book tour, and they were successful. Thunder was brought in great doses. Sarah chose Des Moines as one of the cities for her UGBT based largely on the amount of enthusiasm generated for her on Twitter.

Sarah Lacy hanging with the Lava Row crew in 2008. Image via sarahlacy on Flickr.

Visits from thought leaders like these can have profound ripple effects on a city: helping people get inspired to cut the corporate ball-and-chain, to push them to start thinking about starting their own business, to get affirmation on why they started their own business, to rethink old ways of doing things, etc. So, who should we bring to Des Moines in 2009? Charlene Li? Guy Kawasaki? Tara Hunt? Tim Ferris? Let’s start this conversation, now.

4.) Des Moines gets a co-working studio

Co-working (a national trend that involves a gathering of people in a shared space, working independently, but leveraging the synergy of working alongside like-minded individuals) has finally taken hold in Des Moines in the form of Impromptu Studio. The first conversations about co-working in Des Moines happened in late 2007 on Twitter, and over time more interest built up, more hands were raised, and then Daniel and Abbie Shipton took the discussion from “What if?” to “We’ll build it.”

If the Twitter glue wasn’t in place at the time, I doubt we would have seen a co-working studio emerge in Des Moines until 2-3 years from now. The movement is accelerating fast here in Iowa — there’s even a co-working studio (called CoLab) under way up north in Ames, a smaller college community.

5.) A brand hijack used for good

SmartyPig, a social savings site born here in Des Moines, has some damn loyal customers. When faced with a blatantly illegal copyright infringement issue, SmartyPig announced it to their Twitter followers. Fans of The Pig rushed to the company’s aid and mobilized / educated the local Twitter community on how to perform a brilliant SEO-powered brand hijack on the offending party. Within days, the issue was resolved, and SmartyPig ended up spending zero dollars in legal fees.

Hyper-connected smart people using their brains and talents for good = awesome.

Okay, it’s late at night, my eyes are tired, sentence structure is getting questionable, so it’s time to wrap up this long-winded post. My own experience with Twitter is that, personally, it has allowed me to meet lots of fantastic, bright, kind, talented people. Professionally, it has created an opportunity to be written about by national media (BusinessWeek), and it has also acted as a referral network and outreach post to attract new clients. Now that’s just one person (me). Imagine that times ten people, or times one hundred people, in a small-ish community such as Des Moines. Now you see the power that I’m talking about.

I honestly believe our local Twitter community is one of the best things to ever happen to our city. It’s helping us connect to one another more efficiently and effectively, it’s helping out on a scale bigger than its own borders, it’s forcing rapid innovation, and — best of all — it’s advancing Des Moines as a city with cultural relevance.

How has the Twitter network in Des Moines changed you, personally or professionally, in 2008? Please leave your thoughts and comments below.

On Wednesday, October 29th, the Lava Row crew (Hillary and myself) will be heading south to Kansas City to attend the very first Highlight Midwest.

The event, as described on the official website, is a gathering of “the region’s [Kansas City, Omaha, and Des Moines] finest entrepreneurs, technologists, social media experts, and new media success stories.”

HM was born from a shared sentiment among Midwest cities: There are hundreds of incredibly smart, passionate, creative and interesting people working on amazing things inside “Flyover Country,” but they remain hidden and ignored. It’s time to celebrate these individuals, companies and achievements.

There’s no rock star keynote speaker at Highlight Midwest — we’re all going to be on the same stage, as equals, learning from one another. The daytime events will be somewhat Barcamp-ish in style, relying on an attendee-generated schedule of presentations. The evening event will consist of community-centric panels, discussing each city’s cultural and technological “DNA,” as well as how the cities can work together to further the relevance of the Midwest.

At some point during the day Hillary and I will be presenting Cleared for Landing: Building a Social Media Business in Flyover Country. We’ll discuss the challenges and advantages of bootstrapping a company that teaches social media in little old Iowa. During the evening event, I’ll also be joining Aaron Webb on the Des Moines panel.

We are so excited to meet new friends and neighbors, and stoked to see fellow Des Moines entrepreneurial ass-kickers Andy Brudtkuhl (48Web), Daniel Shipton (Impromptu Studio) and Mike Templeton (Microblink, Dosovo) give their presentations. You may view the full list of presenters here.

And yes — because tech events aren’t anything without killer parties — there will be TweetUps! The Flying Saucer will be hosting one at 5:00 pm on the 28th, and another will take place at 810 Zone on Wednesday evening at 8:00 pm.

So, are you coming? We can’t wait to meet you at Highlight Midwest!

Here at Lava Row we’ve got an abundant supply of outdated business cards that we need to get rid of, and we’ve figured out an alternative to throwing them away.

Here’s the deal — Grab a card from Hillary or myself at tonight’s Des Moines TweetUp at The Underground. Then, your mission — should you choose to accept it — is to come up with a slogan / motto / tagline for Lava Row, write it on the card, and TwitPic it or upload it to Flickr for everyone to see. Be sure to tag it with #LavaRow. And take your time — we don’t expect inspiration to strike overnight.

We may extend the contest into future TweetUps until all the cards are gone, so if you can’t attend tonight’s event, don’t worry! The person who wins best slogan (determined by us) will have a couple of drinks bought for them at the following TweetUp.

Just to recap: Write a cool tagline for us and you could win booze! Sweet deal, right? We’ll see you tonight, and have fun!