February 2012

With over 180 events in London alone last week and over 15,000 registrations not including the people enjoying all the action on Livestream, it was a serious hit!

Don't forget that eleven other cites were simultaneously taking part in Social Media Week 2012, although London being our amazing city made the most noise on Twitter throughout the week according to Brandwatch with 29% of the global buzz and over 50000+ Tweets, with New York close behind.

Day One

On Monday causing a stir was Twitter, the Butterfly effect and the future of Journalism with Andrew Walker, founder of Tweetminster; Paul Lewis, Special Projects Editor at the Guardian; Anna Doble, Senior Online Producer at Channel4 News; Steve Butterworth, founder of Flumes Media Limited; and Titia Ketelaar, UK correspondent at NRC Handelsblad. Paul Sawers from The Next Web brings you all the highlights.

UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) and Thomson Reuters have teamed up to provide UK technology companies with the chance to demo their products at UK Demo Day on Sunday 11th March at this year's South By Southwest Interactive (SXSWi). 

As Facebook heads towards a record stock flotation that could value the company at £63 billion (and Mark Zuckerberg at £17.8 billion), we have to ask what role we, the users, play in its success.

The website relies on adverts to generate profit. Those can be directed either to an external website or to a branded Fan Page. Marketers realised early on that directing their ads to a Fan Page rather than a standard ‘Dot Com’, not only meant a better response (the site shared information about other friends who endorse the action), but also introduced the potential to grow massive marketing databases to which they could direct promotional messages at no further cost.

We’ve all swallowed the pill and a quick glance at your new timeline profile will show how many Fan Pages you have now ‘liked’- far more than you’d imagine, it’s not uncommon for single profiles to join hundreds a year.

We are very excited to announce another very awesome addition to this year's #SMWLDN, the Social Media Week London 2012 Awards, sponsored by 3 Monkeys. 

The categories for the awards will be announced at tomorrow night's Official #SMWLDN Closing Party.

In keeping with the Global Social Media Week theme; "empowering change through collaboration," the awards will be judged by you and awarded in 2 weeks time. Voting will be done via the Chinwag website. 

With so much going on, the #SMWLDN Closing Party is definitely an event not to missed - we'll be releasing another 50 tickets at 2pm today, so make sure you're quick and grab yourself one before they all go.