Participate in Social Media Week

If you’re interested in how social and mobile media are affecting society and how we communicate, go to socialmediaweek.org to follow events being held in nine cities around the world until February 11.

 

Nokia has partnered with Social Media Week to connect thousands of people inNew York, San Francisco, Rome, Paris, Toronto, São Paulo, London, Hong Kong and Istanbul via a mobile or web browser platform that empowers them to communicate in real time.

This is the fourth and largest conference since the concept launched in 2009, and will look at how “local and regional societies, cultures, and economies are becoming more integrated and empowered through social and mobile communications”.

Facebook is in its seventh year already – even the most reticent users have a presence now, even if they don’t yet fully embrace its benefits from a personal and/or business perspective.

Meanwhile, Google and the social networking and microblogging network, Twitter, have worked out a way to enable tweets to get out of an embattled Egypt during the internet and cell phone communication blackout imposed by the Hosni Mubarak regime. Anyone anywhere with telephone access can call one of a few telephone numbers and leave a voice message, which will be hosted by Google on SayNow.com, and automatically tweeted on the Twitter feed @speak2tweet. They are also being translated and the text posted on Egypt.alive.in.

Businessweek.com says Twitter has more than 175 million users globally who use twitter.com to post tweets (messages) of up to 140 characters each.

Usage around major events keeps breaking records. King of Pop Michael Jackson’s death in 2009 generated 100 000 tweets per hour, causing the Twitter servers to crash.

Twitter.com was upgraded late 2010 to enable links to images and short videos from supported websites like YouTube and Flickr.