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Today we acknowledge and celebrate the revolution of media becoming social. A day that honors the technological and societal advancements that have allowed us to have a dialogue, to connect and to engage not only the creators of media, but perhaps more importantly, one another.

It’s a day to celebrate the changes in media that have empowered us to stay connected to information in real time, the tools that have enabled us to communicate from miles apart, and the platforms that have given a voice to the voiceless and victims of protest injustice. It’s a revolution worth celebrating. Today, we celebrate Social Media Day and we hope you’ll join us.

So how do you participate? Being social, of course. You can do this online by tracking the social updates in various ways as listed below, or you can make some connections offline by attending an event near you. There are more than 600+ meetups in 93 countries today with thousands of attendees. As far as we know, there is no official holiday dedicated to social media. We think it deserves a day of it’s own, and what better way to celebrate than to connect with your local social media community?

There are lot’s creative events planned from panels, to charity fundraisers and even sporting tournaments. Below is a message from our very own Pete Cashmore explaining the idea, reasons for and goals behind Social Media Day:

A Message From Mashable’s Founder and CEO Pete Cashmore

So what’s next? As Pete mentions, we want this to be a launching point for you to build a lasting relationship with your social media community by continuing to host Monthly Mashable Meetups using our Meetup Everywhere page, or more frequently if you think it works better for your community.

Perhaps today’s local meetup was a place for you to network, but now you can take it one step further by organizing panels, demos and more — or maybe you can just keep it simple with monthly social networking meetups. The point is, let’s keep this social community connected, online and off. And next year, watch for the second annual Social Media Day, as we hope to continue to build on this celebration. The next date of the meetups will be July 27th, class='blippr-nobr'>Mashable’sclass="blippr-nobr">Mashable 5th birthday. Stay tuned and stay social!

How To Participate in Social Media Day

• Meetup Everywhere Mashable: Sign up to attend an event on the Meetup Everywhere Mashable.
• Watch the live streams worldwide: We’ll be updating throughout the day.
• Tweet: Use the #smday hashtag on class='blippr-nobr'>Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter. With so many participating, we should be a trending topic on Twitter on June 30. Also, we’ll soon be announcing a prize for those that tweet or post to class='blippr-nobr'>Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook.
• Add the Social Media Day Twitter theme from TweetyGotBack to your account in support of the day.
• Follow @mashSMday: Follow @mashSMday on Twitter for updates and developments on the celebration.
• Comment via Facebook: Go to Smday.com and leave a comment either promoting your meetup or tell us what you’re doing for your event.
• Upload to class='blippr-nobr'>Flickrclass="blippr-nobr">Flickr: Upload photos to Flickr and tag them with #smday.

Winner of Sony Dash Giveaway

Last week we announced a Sony Dash giveaway that would be awarded to an attendee of a Social Media Day meetup in the U.S. and had fanned us on Facebook. The winner is Heather Spring, an Internet Marketing Manager at Accenture in Chicago, and is attending the Wheaton, Illinois meetup today with a crowd of about 40. Spring, who prior to entering the web world worked as a nuclear engineer, heard about the local meetup through the Mashable e-mail newsletter. She thinks meetups are a great way to socialize in real life with other social media professionals.

“Hopefully we can have conversations longer than 140-character tweets,” Spring said. Why is social media day worth celebrating? She said because “social media has become such a force that allows anyone to be heard – no matter where they are or who they are or what they have to say. And there’s always someone willing to listen.” Congrats to Heather on the prize!

Top 10 Meetups (Based on Attendance)

1. New York, NY/> 2. Sao Paulo, Brazil/> 3. Barcelona, Spain/> 4. Santa Ana, CA/> 5. Antwerp, Belgium/> 6. Buenos Aires, Argentina/> 7. Atlanta, GA/> 8. Boston, MA/> 9. Philadelphia, PA/> 9. Chicago, IL/> 10. San Francisco, CA

Social Media Day Tweets

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See the Closest Meetup to Your City

We’d also love to hear what you’re doing for Social Media Day in the comments below or in the Facebook comments section on Smday.com.

For more Social Media coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Social Mediaclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Social Media channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

By Tess Alps: Why is TV-dissing such a big part of internet orthodoxy? Clay Shirky has been out promoting his new book, Cognitive Surplus, which states that internet activity is displacing TV among the young and that this is a good thing. There have been newspaper reviews like this and yesterday he was interviewed on Radio 4’s Today programme.

To be fair to Shirky, he doesn’t say that all TV is “bad”, but he believes that being online is better – connecting, creating, sharing. I would have to be a philistine not to recognise the many positive benefits that the internet has brought us, and I share Shirky’s idealistic hope that it will promote democracy, knowledge, peace, love etc.

My problems with his book are three-fold: I dispute some of his facts, some of the distinctions that he draws and some of the science that he employs.

Facts first: is TV viewing declininTo be fair to Shirky, he doesn’t say that all TV is “bad”, but he believes that being online is better – connecting, creating, sharing. I would have to be a philistine not to recognise the many positive benefits that the internet has brought us, and I share Shirky’s idealistic hope that it will promote democracy, knowledge, peace, love etc.

My problems with his book are three-fold: I dispute some of his facts, some of the distinctions that he draws and some of the science that he employs.g for the first time ever among the young? Not in the UK or Europe, and TV catch-up services online are extra. TV viewing is booming in developing markets. Anyone who has watched the World Cup coverage will have been moved to see young African children joyfully watching their first TV football match.

Secondly, to position the internet as an alternative to TV is meaningless – and I don’t say that lightly, because Clay Shirky is clearly a very intelligent person. The internet is a vast and transformational technology, but it is not a homogenous medium.

Many human activities that once took place offline can now be conducted online, including watching TV. A growing percentage of young people’s time online is spent watching TV and video – and then talking about it, as a quick glance at Twitter will prove. Sadly, there is about a 1:99 ratio between people who create things online and those who just consume them, much as in the real world; and TV inspires online creativity.

Finally, a bit of science. The word “passive” is often used to denigrate TV viewing. There might be less physical movement than twitching with a mouse but the brain is deeply engaged watching TV. The brain is a complex organism; the very title of Shirky’s book indicates he overvalues rational and cognitive processes over emotional intelligence and education; action over feelings.

We have just finished some neuroscientific research looking at the difference in the brain activity between watching TV and browsing websites (largely text based) and the differences are marked. TV is much stronger in areas such as emotion and long-term memory encoding and web browsing is stronger for visual attention. So they are different – but complementary.

Watching TV is a mostly shared experience; the real-life conversations within families that TV provokes are enormously valuable. Entertaining people and promoting happiness is a noble pursuit; TV is the master. But we should also recognise TV’s vast role as an informer, educator and promoter of democracy every bit as important as the internet.

Most of the time, the ease that the internet brings to human endeavour is brilliant, but I can think of areas where it has casualised and arguably cheapened some things. What’s the exchange rate between an online click on a petition and a Jarrow marcher? Birthday wishes on Facebook take a mere two seconds.

I could reverse what Shirky does and make unfair comparisons between the best of TV and the worst of the internet: is it better to watch Survival and Dispatches or to play to World of Warcraft and poke a friend? But I’d rather value both these massive cultural treasures for all the good they can do, separately and together.

Tess Alps is chief executive of Thinkbox, the marketing body for UK commercial TV

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