Friday, September 16, 2011
LA Looks To Prove It's A Social Media Mecca
Los Angeles is looking to prove it is a center of the social media universe next week, with a roster of events for Social Media Week Los Angeles. According to local event organizers, the Los Angeles Social Media Week events--75 in all--are expected to have well more than the 4,000 who participated last year. The week long list of events includes parties, celebrity social media personalities, conferences and panels, and a keynote by Robert Tercek.
Social Media Week is being run concurrently across cities across the world, including Beirut, Berlin, Bogota, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Glasgow, Milan, Moscow, Rio de Janiero, Sao Paulo, and Vancouver. The local LA events are being run by social media firm SocialRadius, which is run by Michael Terpin. Los Angeles usually ranks in the middle of the pack for social media activity-- one recent ranking put LA at number 15 out of the top 25 social cities, based on social media activity. However, the city's social media impact is probably much greater than that ranking might imply, particularly due to the influence of celebrities on sites like Twitter. A large number of the top 10 Twitter users are celebrities living in Los Angeles, including Lady Gaga (Bel Air), Katy Perry (Sunset Strip), Kim Kardashian (Los Angeles), Taylor Swift (Los Angeles), and Ashton Kutcher (Los Angeles)--and the city is currently ranked number 2 in terms of Twitter users, according to some sites.