• From the Bay Area we have Diddit, which helps you share your experiences and find new stuff to do.
• New York will be in the house at Twiistup with BantamLive, a social CRM solution.
• We’ve got a local Santa Monica start-up, ExpenseBay, which is making life easier for anyone who’s ever had to fill out an expense report.
• And from Los Angeles we have the multimedia company EQAL.

If you are a startup and are interested in showing off your company on stage as well as getting a free table, there is still hope. As long as you apply by this Friday, the 26, you can still be selected as a Twiistup Showoff.

And lastly, if you haven’t registered for the Twiistup yet, you better hurry up and do so because we are already running out of tickets. Just like the previous Twiistups, we are expecting this one to sell out.

We look forward to seeing you there!

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.

The 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.

Andrew Warner is the founder of Mixergy, which helps startups grow through live events and online audio programs.  His previous company, Bradford & Reed, created and incubated a collection of Web sites that in 2003 were sold to eUniverse.

Andrew will leverage his broad knowledge of innovative companies in and outside of LA to select the finalists and ultimately the Judge’s Choice of Twiistup 5.

Have you applied yet?

Sarah Lacy is an award winning journalist and author of the critically acclaimed book, “Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0″ (Gotham Books, May 2008). Lacy has been a reporter in Silicon Valley for nearly a decade, covering everything from the tiniest startups to the largest public companies. She writes a biweekly column for BusinessWeek.com called “Valley Girl” and is co-host of Yahoo! Finance’s Tech Ticker. She lives in San Francisco with her husband.

Sarah will be helping us determine the lineup of Showoffs that will demo at our next event in February.  She will also attend the event and weigh in on the Judge’s Choice award.  We’re psyched to have her on board and can’t wait to see her at Twiistup 5.

Apply to Showoff

Big thanks to FreshBooks, Growthink, IPEVO and (mt) Media Temple for providing a sweet prize package.

IPEVO creates devices that enhance the internet experience. Renowned for its iconic line of Skype certified hardware, IPEVO has established a reputation for award-winning designs and innovating products for seamless web integration.