Fourth of July wasn’t the only holiday celebrated last week. Around the world, connected people held live meetups on June 30 to celebrate the Mashable’s third-annual Social Media Day. There were concerts, guest speakers, and, of course, lots of networking as people commemorated the role social media has played in connecting the world.
This year, the day got more recognition than ever. 17 cities worldwide and 3 U.S. states officially declared June 30 to be Social Media Day.
Here in New York City, the home of Mashable’s headquarters, revelers were treated to a sold-out event featuring a live performance from New York-based rapper and founding member of the Wu Tang Clan, GZA/The Genius. From all accounts, the party was pretty poppin’, but cities like Chicaco and San Francisco had big parties of their own.
You can check out complete coverage on Mashable, or from the day’s official hashtag, #smday.
Between Social Media Day and Independence Day, the digital world seemed to take a little time off to unplug and celebrate. But there were a few other stories to report from last week.
Twitter and LinkedIn Break Up
Last Friday, Michael Sippey wrote a post on Twitter’s blog entitled “Delivering a consistent Twitter experience.” The post discussed the new “Twitter cards” feature, and quoted CEO Dick Costolo as saying, “What you’ll see us do more and more as a platform is allow third parties to build into Twitter.”
Just after trumpeting its commitment to third party developers, Sippey also wrote that Twitter, “will be introducing stricter guidelines around how the Twitter API is used,” and getting tougher on enforcing the rules.
The effects were felt almost immediately when LinkedIn, the business-networking site, announced that afternoon that it was cutting ties with Twitter. The two had been partners since 2009, allowing for syncing updates from one site to the other.
It definitely seems like a one-way breakup: users can still seamlessly share LinkedIn updates on Twitter, but can no longer automatically share Tweets on LinkedIn. The Internet has since been abuzz with theories on why.
GigaOm argues that this is part of Twitter’s deliberate decision to structure its business model around advertising rather than on being an open media platform. Some argue that this is a mistake, while others believe it was Twitter’s only possible move.
Netflix Milestones
On July 3, Netflix announced that its users streamed 1 billion hours of video in June for the first time in the company’s history. According to GigaOm, that makes the service more popular than any traditional U.S. cable network. In some households, that’s even more viewership than broadcast networks like ABC.
After some bumps in the road, it seems the millions of dollars Netflix invested to go from a DVD rental service to a streaming site is paying off. At only eight dollars a month, Netflix is considerably cheaper than cable, and many people (including yours truly) are using Netflix to completely supplement a subscription to cable TV.
The battle for online streaming supremacy is on, with Hulu Japan scoring deals with HBO and AMC. Amazon has landing licensing with Fox, NBCUniversal, Viacom, Paramount Pictures, The Discovery Channel, and MGM Studios to add content to the library of its Amazon Prime service.
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Why do you think Twitter dumped LinkedIn? Do you think Amazon or Hulu can overthrow Netflix? Did you celebrate Social Media Day? Let us know in the comments and connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn.
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Ryan W. Neal is a journalist from Sacramento, California. After earning a B.A. in English and philosophy at UC Santa Barbara, he interned with the Santa Barbara Independent and wrote freelance stories for the Sacramento News & Review, The Summit Daily News, and Virgin.com/music. He earned his M.S. in journalism from Columbia University, and now works as Editorial Assistant at Magnet Media.
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