“Yes we know, we wrote the campaign-site.” As we are walking down the glass-concrete stairs in the large but tasteful office on Madison Ave in New York City, getting the grand tour, we can’t help but pointing that out to our host as she shows us some ping-pong tables and describes a campaign they have recently been used for.

This is the last day of a busy week for the CEO of All Widgets, Jeremy Norberg, and me, Claes Nygren. We started off that week at the hottest media conference worldwide, SXSW in Austin Texas, continued by seeing several customers in Chicago and then meeting with a couple of advertising agencies in New York, this one being the last. A couple of hours later we boarded the plane back to Seattle and home.

It wasn’t the first time we had a chance to use the expression “yes, we wrote that.” The top U.S. ad agencies are a small crowd after all, and our young company All Widgets has become the social-media and mobile developing expert to go to for many of them. That position doesn’t give us the chance to be lazy. Six months is a lifetime in the world of social media technology, and companies like Facebook and Twitter can change the rules with a few minutes notice.

Could All Widgets’ success have been achieved from Sweden? My answer is: Not easily. The reason is not money (All Widgets is not VC founded), marketing (you can barely find our web-site), nor distance (most of All Widgets’ customers can be reached from Europe just as fast as from Seattle). I think it is a matter of network and presence. All Widgets was on site at launch day of the Facebook platform 2007 with an application. I doubt very few Swedish companies ever heard of it that day. With just a few connections within the business, the viral message has spread by word of mouth.

So, can Swedish companies succeed in the social media field? I would say there are many examples of how that can be done successfully, specifically within the mobile area. Creating a social media network can take time but doesn’t have to be costly. Recent developments, such as cloud computing, make it possible to start an IT company with almost no resources. On a higher level, I think Sweden will benefit a lot from having Matthew Barzun as the U.S. Ambassador in Stockholm. Having been given the opportunity to listen to him at the SACC E-Days earlier this month, I think that his interest in creating contacts between U.S. and Swedish IT companies will benefit both.

I certainly know that my training program at All Widgets will benefit me personally. Since the U.S. happens to be ahead of Europe in the area of social media, All Widgets is offering me a fantastic opportunity to gain unique U.S. experience and create a personal network within the business. Again, it is a matter of network and presence.

Claes Nygren is engaged in an 18-month training program as a social software engineer on a J-1 visa through SACC-USA. All Widgets’ website