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!!!

Recent report from Hitwise says Facebook is the No.1 website in the US in terms of web traffic.

The report says

“The market share of visits to Facebook increased 185% last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google increased 9% during the same time frame. Together Facebook.com and Google.com accounted for 14% of all US Internet visits last week.”

Does this mean Google is pushed to the No.2 spot ?

Lets see some interesting infographics of  both the companies from Pingdom & onlineschools.org.

The main advantage for Facebook is the 400 million user base which grew up to this level from 200 million in just one year. The other pulling factor are your friends. When your friends are in Facebook, why do you want to go anywhere else? There are a few downsides though. Although Mr.Zuckerberg expects a 70 percent revenue growth in 2010, Facebook became positive in cash flow only around last September. Facebook must also work hard to set right the huge privacy issues which they are having right now.

But on the other side Google dominates on the $ value. With around $24.5 billion and after making $6.5 billion profit in the past year, Google will only get better to dominate the market in online TV and film distribution, improving its “Chrome” browser and enhancing its core “Search” & “Advertisement” Business. Google has also jumped in to the mobile market with its Android mobile platform. It got better with the acquisition of Admob and with the introduction of the nexus phone as a competition to Apple.

Apple hit back on the announcement of iAds in the WWDC 2010 Keynote. Today Apple has revised its developer agreement almost banning the competing ads. Now, What will happen to Google’s Admob? This makes Google’s life even tougher. See this interesting infographic from Gigao.

Conclusion: Google has to fight with Facebook as well as Apple to stay afloat in this Technology WAR. Iam sure both Apple (World’s No1 Technology company) and Facebook (World’s No1 Website in terms of traffic and user base) will be given a good run for their money by Google. Apple and Facebook on the other hand are great technology companies and they will surely push Google to the limits.

Whatever be the result, we are the ultimate beneficiaries because we will be getting new technologies and great gadgets as these giants continue fight among themselves. Let this healthy war continue...

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