by Brian Solis

This week I’m joining Frank Gruber, Sarah Lacy, Jackie Peters, Peter Pham, Andrew Warner, Richard Wolpert, Will Jessup and Devlyn Steele to judge the Showoffs this week at the highly anticipated Twiistup 5 in Santa Monica.

Meet the Showoffs:

Causecast, dubbed “a one stop philanthropy shop” by TechCrunch, is a platform where media, philanthropy, social networking, entertainment and education converge to serve a greater purpose.

Cogi set out with a simple goal – give professionals a way to effortlessly recall and track everything in their important conversations through the use of an intuitive, browser-based service that seamlessly transcribes the important parts of conversation – the ‘COGent Ideas’ or Cogi.

eHow – More than 27 million people visit eHow.com each month to search more than 300,000 articles that are professionally written with clear and concise directions on how to do things. It also has a rapidly-growing library of articles created by eHow’s members and a large library of professional instructional videos.

FixYa empowers individuals to repair and improve upon their already-purchased possessions. The company also offers business services to manufacturers and retail businesses through its custom partnership opportunities.

GoGreenSolar is global group of professionals dedicated to improve the distribution of renewable energy products, services and financing for people everywhere.

Meebo is a new communications and media company that’s re-writing the way people have conversations and communicate on the Web.

RoboDynamics is built by passionate people who want to use technology to shift the status quo and leverage state-of-the-art technology in robotics to change the way people live and work.

TheScene connects individuals to the hottest places, people and events in their area. The Scene’s trendsetting community is on the pulse of nightlife and entertainment in various cities throughout the world.

Viewdle is a facial-recognition powered digital media platform for indexing, searching and monetizing video assets.

Yammer is a tool for making companies and organizations more productive through the exchange of short frequent answers to one simple question: ‘What are you working on?’

On Friday February 13th, Frank Gruber (@somewhatfrank), Sarah Lacy (@sarahcuda) and I (@briansolis) are hosting post-Twiistup brunch tweetup. Follow us on Twitter and stay tuned for details.

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How-to content by pros and members that can make some cash by writing content from home.

eHow is one of the most well known how-to resource on the web. Its mission is to offer realistic solutions for everyday questions – from how to organize your desk to how to prevent global warming. With a database of more than 300,000 professionally written and editorially directed articles, more than 100,000 how-to videos, and a rapidly growing library of member-contributed articles, eHow caters to an audience of people who seek practical knowledge.

he eHow community is one where users are educating and learning from each other. Community members write their own how-to articles with easy-to-use publishing tools that let them share their knowledge through text, images and video. They can write and publish articles on their topic of choice and, through their Writer’s Compensation Program, automatically earn extra cash. eHow members can also interact with each other through a robust set of social media tools.

Questions from our Twiistup panel:

Brian Solis: I love the idea about socializing resource communities. How are people finding out about eHow and what’s the incentive for them to contribute content?

eHow: eHow: About 27 million unique visitors come to eHow every month (Google Analytics).  The majority of those are from searching topics like “How to Boil Water” and our articles show up at the top of their search results.  But we are also finding that a growing number of people are coming to us via direct navigation.  This information, combined with our growing number of registered members (now at 300,000), lead us to believe that more and more people are telling their friends and family about eHow as a place to not only find information, but share their personal knowledge and make money.

TechZulu: How did you manage to get users to submit content when you first started the company?

eHow: Great question. When we acquired eHow.com, it was a decade old and hadn’t been touched in many years.  It had thousands of professional articles and a few million visitors.  First our development team rebuilt the site, with social media tools that allow people to create profiles, publish articles and make money.  Then a couple community managers, who are also editors, started to cultivate the few folks that had found the site.  We guided them through the process. They gave us feedback and we iterated our tools to make them better.  They told their friends and colleagues.  And it grew, and grew to hundreds of thousands of people – many making hundreds of dollars a month – contributing to the site.

Brian Solis: How is eHow planning on reaching more people to boost/share the valuable content within the community? It seems that sites like Yahoo Answers are among the first results when people naturally search for information.

eHow: We are just coming off a year of explosive growth, almost 1000% YOY (Dec. 07 total compared to Dec. 08), and with the current economic climate, we have seen the number of articles written by our community increase 128% since last July.  We have some great tools on the site that can help our members to write compelling articles and make money.  Our editorial team specifically requests titles that can be “checked out” and written.  In addition, our community has set up groups to support each other and share tips on writing and socializing their articles.

For more info on Twiistup 5 and the other ShowOffs, be sure to visit the main site.

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My fellow judges and I huddled over 100 applications submitted by hopeful, innovative tech companies, to select the top 10 “showoffs” for Twiistup 5 in Los Angeles this February 2009 – an event so huge, that it has to be hosted in an airplane hanger.

Judges include: Sarah Lacy, Jackie Peters, Peter Pham, Andrew Warner, Richard Wolpert, Will Jessup, Frank Gruber, Devlyn Steele and yours truly.

Introducing the top 10 companies for Twiistup 5:

Causecast

Causecast, dubbed “a one stop philanthropy shop” by TechCrunch, is a platform where media, philanthropy, social networking, entertainment and education converge to serve a greater purpose.

Cogi

Cogi set out with a simple goal – give professionals a way to effortlessly recall and track everything in their important conversations through the use of an intuitive, browser-based service that seamlessly transcribes the important parts of conversation – the ‘COGent Ideas’ or Cogi.

eHow

More than 27 million people visit eHow.com each month to search more than 300,000 articles that are professionally written with clear and concise directions on how to do things. It also has a rapidly-growing library of articles created by eHow’s members and a large library of professional instructional videos.

FixYa

FixYa empowers individuals to repair and improve upon their already-purchased possessions. The company also offers business services to manufacturers and retail businesses through its custom partnership opportunities.

GoGreenSolar

GoGreenSolar is global group of professionals dedicated to improve the distribution of renewable energy products, services and financing for people everywhere.

Meebo

Meebo is a new communications and media company that’s re-writing the way people have conversations and communicate on the Web.

RoboDynamics

RoboDynamics is built by passionate people who want to use technology to shift the status quo and leverage state-of-the-art technology in robotics to change the way people live and work.

TheScene

The Scene connects individuals to the hottest places, people and events in their area. The Scene’s trendsetting community is on the pulse of nightlife and entertainment in various cities throughout the world.

Viewdle

Viewdle is a facial-recognition powered digital media platform for indexing, searching and monetizing video assets.

Yammer

Yammer is a tool for making companies and organizations more productive through the exchange of short frequent answers to one simple question: ‘What are you working on?’

Congratulations to the final companies. In February, they will demo their products live and will also compete for the Fan Favorite and Judge’s Choice awards.

Secure your spot for Twiistup 5 before it sells out.

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