When you think about what areas are driving the trends in social media, you usually think east coast or west coast, but who knew that St. Louis is becoming the rising star of social media hubs, right here in the heart of the Midwest?

Last week I attended two well planned, successful events discussing social media, and yes, both were here in St. Louis.

Social Media Club

The first event was put on by the Social Media Club of St. Louis, which is an organization that enables people to share knowledge and build relationships. Their slogan is, “If you get it, Share it.” St. Louis founders, Reem Abeidoh (@rabeidoh on Twitter) and Todd Jordan (@tojosan) started the club this year with the goal of building it as a hub for all social media users to exchange knowledge and develop relationships among people they chat with online. The kickoff event was held back in May, and they have had a meeting on the third Thursday of every month since then at various venues throughout St. Louis. Each month features a different panel of social media experts discussing a variety of topics.

Oh, and did I mention that all of their events are free? Well, they are. You don’t even have to sign up for a membership. The only thing they ask is that you RSVP on their Web site, and after that, you can opt to have emails reminders sent to you for future events.

You can also check out their Facebook page for more information on the monthly events.

This month’s panel discussed new media versus old media and featured Craig Cheatham (@InsideNews4 on Twitter), an investigative reporter at Channel 4 News – KMOV; Erica Smith (@ericasmith), multimedia producer at the St. Louis Post Dispatch; Bill Streeter (@billstreeter), a video blogger (lofistl.com), blogger for the Riverfront Times, and teacher/advisor at St. Louis University; and Mike Flynn(@mikeflynn), a blogger at PunchingKitty.com and a web developer.

They discussed the benefits of social media and blogging and how it is changing the face of old media.
Some key points of the discussion included:

• Journalism ethics in blogs vs. print media.
• How bloggers have raised the bar and helped enhance the integrity of journalism.
• Blogs need to be backed up with links and sources in order to be trusted and considered authentic.
• Social media is driving the first response to breaking stories, whereas traditional media is still having difficulty responding as quickly and effectively.

Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey Returns Home to St. Louis

The second social media event I attended was the Jack Dorsey Tweet Up sponsored by Webster University. I was surprised to find out that Dorsey (@jack), the co-founder and chairman of Twitter, is a St. Louis native who grew up in Compton Heights and attended Bishop DuBourg High School. He told an audience of almost 1,000 about his story, how his love of maps led to one of his first jobs as a dispatch programmer for emergency personnel and how he eventually started Twitter with co-founder Biz Stone.

For a recap of his speech, the following blogs offer a nice rundown:

Blogger Erin Eschen’s Notes

In Media Res Blog: The Highlights

The Social Media Report’s Recap

Dorsey also gave St. Louis a hint about his new company that is currently in the works with his former boss, Jim McKelvey of St. Louis-based Mira Digital Publishing. He mentioned health care and financial services as possible industries for the new company and he said St. Louis would play a role.

The Riverfront Times reported that the new company would be based on the “three concepts (of Twitter): immediacy, transparency and approachability.” He couldn’t give us much more information, because it is currently still in “stealth mode.”

I would like to commend Dr. Benjamin Akande (@benjamin_akande), Dean of the School of Business and Technology at Webster University, and Webster University (@websteru) for putting on such a successful event. One interesting feature of the event was a large projection screen that was displayed on the stage showing a live feed of tweets with the hash tag #jackatwebster. Dr. Akande also announced at the event that #jackatwebster made it to the list of Trending Topics on Twitter, to which the audience responded with cheers and clapping. While the Twitter feed was a little distracting, it was an interesting addition to Dorsey’s speech and made the event more interactive for the audience.

After his speech, Dorsey took questions from the audience and the media. Dorsey’s visit to St. Louis caused quite a stir in local media, prompting news articles and blogs left and right. To see a list of the media coverage, as well as video of Dorsey’s speech and photos, click here.

Webster University then honored Dorsey with the Success to Significance 2009 Person of the Year award. However, Dorsey’s day did not end there. After visiting Webster, Dorsey went on to St. Louis City Hall to receive the key to the City of St. Louis by Mayor Francis Slay. Lastly, he ended his eventful day by throwing the first pitch at the Cardinals game that night.

It was a big day for Jack Dorsey, the St. Louis native and Twitter CEO, and yet an even bigger day for St. Louis. This may be the jump start St. Louis needs to become a key player in social media.