Beyond the Blue Horizon...: Happy Social Media Day!

Happy Social Media Day! AND my birthday. Now, how cool is that!

Today we acknowledge and celebrate the revolution of media becoming social. A day that honors the technological and societal advancements that have allowed us to have a dialogue, to connect and to engage not only the creators of media, but perhaps more importantly, one another.
It’s a day to celebrate the changes in media that have empowered us to stay connected to information in real time, the tools that have enabled us to communicate from miles apart, and the platforms that have given a voice to the voiceless and victims of protest injustice. It’s a revolution worth celebrating. Today, we celebrate Social Media Day and we hope you’ll join us.
So how do you participate? Being social, of course. You can do this online by tracking the social updates in various ways as listed below, or you can make some connections offline by attending an event near you. There are more than 600+ meetups in 93 countries today with thousands of attendees. As far as we know, there is no official holiday dedicated to social media. We think it deserves a day of it’s own, and what better way to celebrate than to connect with your local social media community?
There are lot’s creative events planned from panels, to charity fundraisers and even sporting tournaments. Below is a message from our very own Pete Cashmore explaining the idea, reasons for and goals behind Social Media Day:

A Message From Mashable’s Founder and CEO Pete Cashmore

So what’s next? As Pete mentions, we want this to be a launching point for you to build a lasting relationship with your social media community by continuing to host Monthly Mashable Meetups using our Meetup Everywhere page, or more frequently if you think it works better for your community.
Perhaps today’s local meetup was a place for you to network, but now you can take it one step further by organizing panels, demos and more — or maybe you can just keep it simple with monthly social networking meetups. The point is, let’s keep this social community connected, online and off. And next year, watch for the second annual Social Media Day, as we hope to continue to build on this celebration. Stay tuned and stay social!

How To Participate in Social Media Day

Meetup Everywhere Mashable: Sign up to attend an event on the Meetup Everywhere Mashable.
Watch the live streams worldwide: We’ll be updating throughout the day.
Tweet: Use the #smday hashtag on Twitter (). With so many participating, we should be a trending topic on Twitter on June 30. Also, we’ll soon be announcing a prize for those that tweet or post to Facebook ().
Add the Social Media Day Twitter theme from TweetyGotBack to your account in support of the day.
Follow @mashSMday: Follow @mashSMday on Twitter for updates and developments on the celebration.
Comment via Facebook: Go to Smday.com and leave a comment either promoting your meetup or tell us what you’re doing for your event.
Upload to Flickr (): Upload photos to Flickr and tag them with #smday.

Winner of Sony Dash Giveaway

Last week we announced a Sony Dash giveaway that would be awarded to an attendee of a Social Media Day meetup in the U.S. and had fanned us on Facebook. The winner is Heather Spring, an Internet Marketing Manager at Accenture in Chicago, and is attending the Wheaton, Illinois meetup today with a crowd of about 40. Spring, who prior to entering the web world worked as a nuclear engineer, heard about the local meetup through the Mashable e-mail newsletter. She thinks meetups are a great way to socialize in real life with other social media professionals.
“Hopefully we can have conversations longer than 140-character tweets,” Spring said. Why is social media day worth celebrating? She said because “social media has become such a force that allows anyone to be heard – no matter where they are or who they are or what they have to say. And there’s always someone willing to listen.” Congrats to Heather on the prize!

Top 10 Meetups (Based on Attendance)

1. New York, NY
2. Sao Paulo, Brazil
3. Barcelona, Spain
4. Santa Ana, CA
5. Antwerp, Belgium
6. Buenos Aires, Argentina
7. Atlanta, GA
8. Boston, MA
9. Philadelphia, PA
9. Chicago, IL
10. San Francisco, CA