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.)

This weekend Des Moines hosted Sarah Lacy, Silicon Valley journalist and author of Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good, for a stop on her User-Generated Book Tour. Sarah chose her UGBT stops largely based on enthusiasm from fans and readers within the communities, and we (and our good friends to the west in Omaha) were fortunate enough to reel her in.

Above is an interview I did with Sarah on Friday evening — we discussed Google’s rumored Digg.com aquisition and $200 million valuation, a possible monetization strategy for Twitter, and the “Human Router” concept. (Watch for a cameo appearance by her husband Geoff near the end!)

Beyond the business side of tech, Sarah is also incredibly well-versed on the topic of emerging cities and the various ingredients they need in order to foster growth of their creative class. Her insight is invaluable — there’s no way I could put a dollar figure to what I (and the Des Moines community) absorbed this weekend.

On a personal, one-to-one level, Sarah is extremely gracious and geniunely interested in what everyone has to say. She even took time to help paint the walls at Des Moines’ first co-working environment, Impromptu Studio. (Photo set on Flickr here.) I also noticed this quality in Gary Vaynerchuk when he came through Des Moines in June — it might be a consistent trait among those who have built up their personal brands via social mediums. Unlike “manufactured” celebrities and public figures, people like Sarah and Gary realize that — above all else — it’s about connecting with the readers, viewers, fans and community.

My main takeaway from the weekend is that our city’s entrepreneurial spirit hasn’t quite “hatched” yet. The excitement and passion are there, and the proper foundation is in place, but we need more and more people taking risks and making that jump. More killer ideas and tight executions like SmartyPig, more entrepreneurs with niche expertise like Liza Kindred, Mike Sansone and Andy Brudtkuhl. More people leading specific movements, like those who have picked up the torch already with 80/35, co-working and Barcamps. At Lava Row we are going back to the drawing board and re-thinking what else we can do, individually and as a company, to support the emergence of Des Moines as a culturally relevant city.

The pieces are in place, now let’s assemble them.

Please join me in thanking Sarah for coming to Des Moines! You can reach out to her on Twitter at @sarahcuda or by leaving a comment on her blog, SarahLacy.com.

Sarah Lacy, author of Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good, will be in Des Moines this Saturday, August 2nd for a book signing/reading event at East Village Books. Afterwards, Sarah will be joining us for conversation and frosty beverages at a Des Moines TweetUp at The Royal Mile. Everyone is welcome to attend!

I finished Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good a couple of weeks ago and found it to be an engaging window into the minds, psyches and social awkwardness of web entrepreneurs. Also interesting to me were the lessons learned from the original dotcom bubble and how they impact emerging tech companies today (going public vs. not going public). Sarah also writes for BusinessWeek and co-hosts Tech Ticker on Yahoo! Finance.

To help promote her book, Sarah asked her fans to make videos of themselves jumping off something while shouting the title. (I call this the LacyJump; no relation to the ShalerJump.) Here at Lava Row, we knew we could create an epic LacyJump with former gymnast Hillary Brown (@hillabean) on staff. Hillary’s video can be viewed below:

On behalf of the entire tech community in Des Moines, we are so excited to have Sarah in town this weekend! Don’t forget to stop by East Village Books and/or the TweetUp on Saturday and say hello. (Oh yeah, she’d appreciate it if you buy a book, also.)

RSVP on Upcoming: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/869511
RSVP on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=32730788248
Juice interview with Sarah Lacy: http://tinyurl.com/5jedk3

Gary Vaynerchuck, host of the popular video podcast Wine Library TV, visited Des Moines this weekend and spoke at East Village Books.

Gary V. is a new form of celebrity, self-made through tireless enthusiasm, infectious energy, hard work, and the ability to leverage powerful social networking tools like Twitter and Facebook. He actually interacts with the community he’s built — Gary typically receives 1,000 e-mails a day and he takes the time to answer each one personally. This is refreshing, especially in a media landscape that likes to package, produce and force-feed us “celebrities” that have zero relevance other than attending parties and appearing in garbage reality programming.

It was a pleasure hearing Gary’s thoughts on building a business and his full-throttle obsession with changing the culture of wine. After his talk and signing at the book store, some of us from the Des Moines TweetUp crew kidnapped Gary and went out for food and cocktails. (Above is a quick video interview that I captured in the back seat of Rob Jensen’s Camry.) Podcasting News also has a fantastic, in-depth interview that you should check out.

Thanks again to @garyvee for visiting Des Moines!

As the flood waters rise here in Des Moines, I am keeping a close watch on IowaFlood.com, a website that aggregates content from various citizen journalists and mainstream media outlets.

The site was created by Andy Brudtkuhl (of 48Web) within just a few hours, built with Yahoo! Pipes and Wordpress. Content is pulled automatically from various sources — alerts from NOAA and the National Weather Service, tagged photos on Flickr, YouTube videos, hashtagged chatter on Twitter, blog posts, articles from outlets like WHO-TV and the Des Moines Register — and all woven together into an incredibly robust, informative news experience.

The cool thing is how seamlessly old media and new media are working together. IowaFlood.com pulls in RSS feeds from the Register, meanwhile, a Register employee on Twitter is hashtagging his tweets with #iowaflood to ensure that his newspaper’s updates are correctly pushed to IowaFlood’s front page.

This creates a nice blend of reporting from authoritative media sources and human, block-by-block coverage that armies of citizen journalists can easily pull off. Thus far, IowaFlood.com has received over 16,000 visitors, generated over 1,000 posts, and survived one database crash — mostly due to word-of-mouth.

If only we had the internet back in 1993…

UPDATE 6/13: On Friday afternoon I went out and grabbed some video of the Des Moines river nearing it’s highest levels since 1993.

UPDATE 6/21: At Thursday’s Des Moines TweetUp, I asked Andy a few questions about the logistics behind building IowaFlood.com on the fly.

Internet entrepreneur, author and renowned geek Chris Pirillo was in Des Moines this weekend and we (the #dmtweetup crew) joined him for an impromptu TweetUp. I got a chance to interview Chris about how Twitter has replaced his RSS reading habits, and I asked him what Des Moines (and Iowa) can do to retain and attract creative talent.

More videos and photos of the event can be found on various Flickr photostreams.

Special thanks to Andy at East Village Books for donating the location space, free coffee and Wifi.

Last Saturday I moved into the new Lava Row office, which is at 400 E. Locust in Des Moines’ gentrified East Village neighborhood. It’s great to finally have a home for the business, especially after a year of working from my house and various coffee shops. Please stop in for a visit if you’re in the area — visitors are always welcome! I’m way up in the tower, as shown in the photo below.

After launching Des Moines’ first TweetUp back in February, my intent was for future events to be de-centralized and self-organizing. I opened up a wiki to let participants discuss ideas for future locations and dates, and almost overnight, others had taken the reins and organized a second TweetUp, which took place this Monday evening at Court Avenue Brewing Company. Based on our unofficial headcount, 17 people showed up — that’s almost triple attendance from last time!

What I love about these events is the opportunity to connect with other people interested in technology and new media here in Des Moines, who I otherwise may never have met. The insights, shared knowledge and ideas formed over cocktails with new friends are extremely valuable, or, as @webboy put it: “It did more for me in one night than LinkedIn did in one year.”

Well said. If you’re interested in joining us for future TweetUps, please check out / join the Des Moines TweetUp wiki and be sure to track updates using the #dmtweetup hashtag method on Twitter.

Just a quick note to announce that I’ve started blogging at IowaBiz.com — a multi-faceted collection of Iowa bloggers talking about various small business topics. I’ll be posting three times per month, covering new media and social media marketing.

Mike Sansone, who previously addressed these subjects at IowaBiz, is stepping aside to further focus his efforts within his business and other arenas. Multiple hat tips to Mike for getting the ball rolling, and to Drew McLellan for inviting me to join the family!

The first post is about Google’s OpenSocial API standard, and why your business should take note of it.

Last night I recorded this quick video at the Des Moines TweetUp with my Flip Video cam. Apologies for the lack of lighting. (We were in an underground drinking establishment.) Twitter-ers in attendance were @mikesansone, @abrudtkuhl, @miketempleton, @scottatdrake, @jakekerber and myself. Looking forward to the next one!