• by David Berkowitz , February 14, 2012

Happy Social Media Week! OK, I’m only referring to those of you in Hamburg, Hong Kong, London, Miami, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Sao Paolo, Singapore, Tokyo, Toronto, and Washington, DC. I’m also referring to everyone else, as you can watch the biggest sessions live or on-demand.

A lot has changed since last year, when I wrote about why Social Media Week should be every week. That feels so quaint. By now, Social Media Week really is every week. In case you’re not convinced, here are 52 reasons why:

1)     Facebook will soon have a billion users. A billion is cool.

2)     Facebook will soon have half a billion mobile users.

3)     Search and social are becoming more intertwined. It’s messy now, but Google+ and Bing are starting to figure out when it works.

4)     Pinterest can become one of the biggest social media properties without any help from “typical” early adopters of male teens and twenty-somethings.

5)     Tumbling is the new blogging.

6)     Blogging’s still as important as ever.

7)     No one remotely sane thinks social media is a fad.

8)     Scrabble and Boggle addicts can play similar games with their friends through their mobile devices without ever worrying about lost game pieces.

9)     You can’t help sometimes checking out your friends’ pictures of their kids.

10)  It’s so big that whenever two or three people say they stop using a massively popular service, The New York Times publishes a “trend” story about its demise.

11) “Social media is a messy, magical gift. It's the unexpected that creates value for both the brand and customer. Done well, social media brings customer and the people of the brand closer together.” – Toby Bloomberg

12)  Wikipedia.

13)  Shaq has always been and will always be one of the best things about Twitter.

14)  Social media gets people to turn on the TV for live events.

15)  It gets people into stores.

16)  In those stores, retailers and product manufacturers can incorporate social content digitally and physically to educate, empower, and excite customers.

17)  Friends’ endorsements sell products.

18)  People get crowds to fund their passion projects…

19)  …and charities…

20)  …while refining their product ideas.

21)  Brandsdothistoo.

22)  “We are the nation… of Google and Facebook.” – President Obama

23)  Are there any weeks where there aren’t social media-focused events?

24)  Job descriptions for people with at least five years of experience focused on social media are looking less ridiculous.

25)  Thanks to Skype, Google+, Apple’s FaceTime, and others, the “Jetsons” vision of video telephony has become real.

26)  Spotify and others have reminded us that music is better with friends.

27)  Social media works best when it brings people together in real life.

28)  It makes professional collaboration far easier and richer.

29)  It has become an essential part of R&D.

30)  “People will tell you social media is some kind of unicorn, but it’s really just a horse.” – Jay Baer

31)  Amazon’s Kindle and Goodreads prove that some social media users have the attention span to read books.

32)  Thanks to Reddit and MetaFilter, even guys who should be ironically over social media by now are non-ironically into it.

33)  Memes are social. Andoccasionallybrilliant.

34)  Social media doesn’t create democratic revolutions, but it helps get people together to change the world.

35)  “People publish. Instead of denigrating user-generated content… marketers need to understand that this is what we care about.” – Seth Godin

36)  There are still a few great social services and apps that haven’t been acquired and subsequently shut down by Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and Twitter. At least, that’s true until Facebook’s IPO.

37)  A few years ago, a presidential candidate was lambasted for being a community organizer. Now community management is one of the hottest professions.

38)  We’re getting closer to figuring out this whole ROI thing.

39)  Foursquare Day is April 16 (think about it). And it was started by a fan.

40)  Brands don’t always have to create; they can curate.

41)  Organizations like Kiva, (RED), and CharityWater keep finding ways to use social media to improve lives.

42)  Justin Bieber was discovered on YouTube. Whether or not you like him, accept that the kid’s ridiculously talented.

43)  We have events like the Suxorz to prevent us from staying too full of ourselves. Even if the event’s during Social Media Week, nominees come in all year long.

44)  Super Bowl comments jumped nearly sevenfold in a single year.

45)  There will be more Tim Tebows and Jeremy Lins.

46)  Some people do care about what their friends are eating.

47)  We’re exposed to more cute animals than we ever were before. That has to elevate our moods enough to reduce healthcare expenditures.

48)  Craigslist, breaking every design rule there is, remains a top 25 website.

49)  The sites ranking higher than Craigslist include strictly social sites Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Wordpress, Answers, Blogspot, Blogger, LinkedIn, and Tumblr, along with socially driven properties like YouTube and Huffington Post.

50)  LinkedIn has proved that social media services can be successful even if they don’t depend entirely on advertising.

51)  “Social has no regard for silos, business units, or geographies. It transcends all of those. The question then isn’t ‘How does social media fit into my organization?’ The question is, ‘How do we adapt our organization’s realities to the realities of social media?’” – Jeremy Epstein

52)  Try going a week without social media.