Peep Insights: The New Reality Of Social Media

Since the first Social Media Week in 2009, the event has seen a staggering one-thousand plus percent visitor growth rates on Twitter and three billion iPhone application downloads. The increased ability of citizen journalism to impact traditional news sources sets the stage for a more complicated discourse on the future of social media and its meaning to our increasingly inter-connected global society.

Social Media Week 2010 opened in New York, with a press briefing highlighting the expansion of the conference to six international cities simultaneously, intended to illuminate the real-time disruptive experience that is social media. Hosted at The Paley Center for Media and streamed online, the briefing brought together a live video chat with the planners in each respective city including: Sao Paolo, San Francisco, Toronto and Berlin.

Speeches in-person came from founder Toby Daniels and other global advisory board members, where it became inherently clear that the ambition of the second annual Social Media Week was to explore a clear, concise definition of social media and its various uses. Unfortunately it is proving to be elusive, especially with its rapid evolution. The search for definition extends to a wide variety of panels and discussions all week, from “Crowdsourcery Potions 101″ to “The Road from Listening to Activation” while the role of social media is integrated among other events targeting not only the technorati and media elite, but also fashionistas, political scientists and activists.

With this year’s conference more than doubling in size with events, mixers, and panels, the digital imprint for Social Media Week 2010 will be noted all over the social web as participants liveblog and augment their conference experience through ‘#smw’ tweets and FourSquare ‘Swarm’ badges. After attending, we can’t help but reflect on the new reality that social media has forced us to return to the basic roots of so many of our institutions – governments must listen to citizens again and businesses can’t ignore customers. Another power shift we’re happy about.

Contributed by Felicia Moeis