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This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Tweetboard

Quick Pitch: Tweetboard is a Twitter-powered “microforum,” and runs on your site rather than being a “destination” site.

Genius Idea: Tweetboard is for website owners who want to display threaded Twitter conversations on their own site and create an instant Twitter-powered forum, where all tweets from the Tweetboard link back to the publisher.

The unobtrusive Tweetboard forum sits on the left hand side of your screen as a small tab indicating the count of tweets since a viewer’s last visit. Visitors can then click the tab and the Tweetboard will slide open with a view of all tweets pulled in from your Twitter stream, threaded appropriately. Tweets pulled in include your account updates and @replies to other users. Replies, however, show up in context of the original message, so as to create a back-and-forth conversation-like feel.

This conversation format spontaneously adds a Twitter friendly-forum to display chatter between you and your followers, friends, customers, and would-be clients. Users can even use Sign in with Twitter to tweet from the page, expand replies, add their own reply, and filter tweets by date, last activity, and most active.

Tweetboard is a pretty nifty addition that many a brand or startup — or even celebrities that want to have a fan forum — should consider implementing on their site. Not only does it reinforce that you have a strong Twitter presence, but it could help reduce support emails, increase your reach across the Twittersphere, grow site traffic, and help new customers/users get engaged.

140ware, the company behind Tweetboard, is automatically approving alpha invite requests to Twitterers who make their request to @140ware in this form: “Requesting an invite for Tweetboard Alpha (http://tweetboard.com) by @140ware, for my site: http://ReplaceWithYourURL.com.”

Sponsored by Microsoft BizSpark

BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

Tags: forum, tweetboard, twitter

Now that the new iPhone does video, we’re likely to see a smattering of apps push out updates to support video upload to the web.

Twitterlator Pro (iTunes link) was the first Twitter app to support video record and upload to Twitter, via yFrog, and just yesterday we learned that Posterous will process 3GS videos via email (regardless of whether they’re shot in landscape mode or not) and post them to your favorite social sites. Now, Kyte is announcing that their mobile app can publish video to the web too.

Kyte’s Mobile Producer (iTunes link), which was previously free, now comes with a $4.99 price tag — the same price as Twitterlator Pro — and supports video recording and upload to your Kyte Channel from the iPhone 3GS. It’s important to note, however, that the app doesn’t support live streaming to the web.

To use Mobile Producer, simply open the app and select to take a video or choose one from your library. If you record video from inside the app, you can also trim or retake as needed. As usual, you can add a show name and append photos and links to the episode. Once you’re done, you can click to broadcast, and the app will upload the video to your Kyte channel. Plus, if you have Twitter enabled in your account settings, the mobile upload will be automatically tweeted to your Twitter network.

On the issue of live streaming to the web, Kyte’s CMO Gannon Hall says that there are currently no plans to support that feature in the iPhone app. According to him, Apple’s SDK has yet to make that feature available, so it’s technically impossible. And unlike Qik, they’re not open to creating a video streaming app that requires an iPhone jailbreak.

Even though live streaming isn’t supported, we do think this is an important development for iPhone video producers already using Kyte, or ones in search of a mobile video provider with support for the iPhone. We’re not sure if it’s going to lure people away from the competition, but it certainly does give Kyte a slight advantage over the other video broadcast services who have yet to create apps that support easy mobile upload.

Tags: iphone 3g s, iphone app, kyte, video, video recorder

Yesterday, we told you about Posterous’ attempt to take over the blogosphere with their new import option. Now they’re back with bigger and better news: support for email uploads for iPhone 3G S videos to practically any social site, including Twitter and Facebook.

Posterous is already a great distributor of your content since you can auto-tweet and post to a variety of other sites. So, with support for iPhone 3G S videos, Posterous is not only taking on TwitPic, but they’re also positioning themselves as a video for any platform service.

You can now share video with Posterous, and any additional site configured for auto-posting, simply by emailing your video to the appropriate Posterous email address. You can even shoot in whatever mode you’d like – landscape or standard – and not have to worry about how the video will be oriented on the web. Just click share on the video and email away to post everywhere (post@posterous,com), or just to specific services (for example, twitter@posterous.com).

Technically you could post video to Posterous via email previously, but they ramped up their support for iPhone videos to automatically render them properly, regardless of whether or not you shoot in landscape mood (trust me, this is fantastic and not supported by many other services), in a flash player that’s appropriate for the video. They’ve also increased overall video quality and updated the service to support the 3g2 and amr mobile formats for audio.

A few bonuses of using Posterous from your iPhone 3G S include the ability to download your video files (a standard feature of the service), video upload by email even when you’re not connected to a WiFi network (a huge shortcoming of other apps), and audio posting to Posterous using the native Voice Memos app.

Basically, Posterous provides the most convenient way to post video from your new iPhone and distribute it to your respective social sites that we’ve seen so far.

See Also: Top 5 Ways to Post Video to Twitter

Tags: iphone, iphone 3g s, posterous, twitter, video, video sharing