Happy Social Media Day to All!

I was at the social media day celebrations conducted by @Mashable in Chennai city (India) Today. There were around 100 people who attended this meetup and it is probably one of the largest Mashable social media meetup’s in Asia. The closest competitor to Chennai is Bengaluru city.

The event started with the welcome speech by the organizer Sorav Jain (@soravjain). He explained about social media’s growth in India. He came up with some stats which showed the progress of India among the social networking website giants like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn over the last couple of years. India is one among the top 10 countries in twitter for the number of registrations. There are around 70 Lakh Indians in Facebook (14 million) and there are close to around 5 million professionals registered in LinkedIn from India.

Then, Sorav spoke about how social media can be used effectively in today’s life by using the power of social networking tools like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Then started the introductions. I was very happy to see the diversification among the participants ranging from college students to CEO’s of big companies. This shows us that Social Media is here to stay.

Later the Games started. It was not just for fun but it was played for a cause. Every member contributed an amount (Rs.50 minimum) to enable game entry. The collected money goes to PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). The great thing is that people from PETA were present at the event to support the cause. It was heartening to see that the participants contributed to the charities in excess to the game fee. This shows us that Social Media is here for a cause.

Then we had a Q&A session wherein four social media experts were selected as a panel and the other participants questioned them. It was a very interactive session where everybody learned something from the other.

The event ended in a great way with a group photo which will be published in Mashable.com. We had some hot samosa’s to fill our tummies as well.

I found a lot of new friends and I will be attending many such meetup’s whenever they are available. Being in the social media marketing industry one cannot miss such great networking opportunities.

It was a great evening with a lot of fun. Thanks to Mashable and Echovme for organizing such a great social media event.

Please use the hash tag #SMDchn while tweeting about this event.

A Message From Mashable’s Founder and CEO Pete Cashmore

Thanks All!!!