New York's Inaugural BlogWorld & New Media Expo Creates First Industry-Wide East Coast Gathering of Bloggers, Podcasters and Social Media Users

NEW YORK, July 13, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The New York debut of BlogWorld & New Media Expo, the world's largest social media and blogging conference and tradeshow, brought East Coast bloggers, podcasters and social media users together as a complete industry for the first time.  BlogWorld, which co-located with Book Expo America at the Jacob Javits Convention Center May 24-26, marked its first East Coast show by breaking expected attendance goals and hosting more than 1,500 attendees from all over the world.  In addition, thousands of Book Expo America registrants also had access to the event.

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Planning for BlogWorld's fifth annual western U.S. event is underway, which this year will move from Las Vegas to the Los Angeles Convention Center, November 3-5.  

The conference featured more than 200 speakers presenting sessions addressing issues such as employees' open access to social media, managing your online reputation, navigating a social media crisis and advances in mobile marketing.

"The response to BlogWorld East has been overwhelmingly positive, reinforcing the decision to expand the Expo to New York City," said Rick Calvert, CEO and co-founder of BlogWorld & New Media Expo. "This event gave new media and traditional media journalists and content creators a unique, large-scale opportunity to meet and network. It was a great environment, lots of energy in the air, and we're feeling the growth of this industry really starting to ramp up right before our eyes."

Highlights from BlogWorld New York 2011:

• The Cool Blue Company launched Social Media Monthly, the world's first printed magazine dedicated to the exploration of the social media evolution.
• Latinos in Social Media (LATISM) unveiled the results of the largest study to date focusing on Latino social media patterns, and BlogWorld sponsored 100-conference attendance scholarships for Latino bloggers.
• Gary Vaynerchuk, New York Times best-selling author of The Thank You Economy, Jeffrey Hayzlett, former CMO of Kodak and best-selling author of The Mirror Test: Is Your Business Really Breathing and H.P. Mallory, one of the most successful self-published author, discussed the intersection of publishing and social media and the importance of one-on-one customer contact in a digital age.
• Executives from three of the world's top 25 brands, American Express, Disney and PepsiCo participated in a keynote discussion focused on how location-based marketing platforms and tools like Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp, Google Places and Bing are being used to drive marketing and sales with customer engagement.

Numerous exhibitors made their BlogWorld debut in New York, including:

• Century 21 Real Estate cemented its commitment to reach the next generation of home buyers and sellers by communicating with consumers via mobile apps, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the @C21-Home Matters Blog.
• Groupon connected with bloggers and helped them monetize their sites and add local relevancy by promoting daily deals.
• The Network Solutions Mobile lounge helped BlogWorld attendees, partly comprised of independent business owners, to take their business Mobile. Network Solutions also brought a life-sized digital simulation of Cloris Leachman a.k.a. "Go Granny" (a parody character created for a video campaign) to BlogWorld via a photo booth to add some fun to the Mobile lounge.
• WordPress.com set up a "Happiness Bar" with an army of support engineers to provide help for its users, answer questions, and get feedback on how to improve WordPress.

Important industry research findings were also revealed at BlogWorld. Tom Webster presented new, unreleased data for 2011 on America's adoption of social networking sites and services from a study conducted by Edison Research and Arbitron. The findings revealed that:

• Social Media now reaches the majority of Americans 12 years of age and older (12+).
• Facebook is now used by 51% of Americans 12+ and Twitter usage stands at 8% of Americans 12+.
• Approximately 46 million Americans 12+ now check their social media sites and services several times every day.
• Approximately 10 million Americans have posted status updates that also provided their location.

New product launches announced at BlogWorld New York provided insights into the latest new media trends and offerings. Examples include: InfoLinks, the in-text advertising platform, launched a new ad unit called "Related Tag - Auto Placement" that allows bloggers to increase their clicks and earnings while adding informational tags within their website's content. Livefyre, a real-time engagement platform focused on building a community around the content of your website, showcased the newest version of its real-time social conversation platform, which is being used across 7,000+ websites. Audible showcased their podcast affiliate program, which gives podcasters a new way to monetize their content with digital audiobooks.

BlogWorld & New Media Expo 2011 in New York was sponsored by premium brands including Ford Motor Company, Century 21 Real Estate, WordPress.com, Network Solutions, Mashable, Posterous, Vanilla Forums, Groupon, Paper.li and more. The keynote presentations were streamed live courtesy of Stickam, the official Streaming Sponsor of BlogWorld NY. TechZulu presented the Expo's featured speaker interviews and news reports.

ABOUT BLOGWORLD & NEW MEDIA EXPO

BlogWorld & New Media Expo is the first and only industry-wide tradeshow, conference and media event dedicated to promoting the dynamic industry of new media.  Thousands of attendees learn about Content Creation, Distribution, Monetization and Social Media Marketing strategies, including step-by-step techniques and leading-edge tools from the most successful and influential Bloggers, Podcasters, Vloggers, Web TV & Radio Broadcasters, Social Influencers, New Media Pros and Online Journalists.

For upcoming event info and announcements, subscribe to e-news at www.blogworldexpo.com and get the latest new media industry news at www.blogworld.com. Follow BlogWorld on Twitter at www.twitter.com/blogworld and www.twitter.com/blogworldexpo.

Media Contact:
Katherine Randall / Katalyst PR
(858) 366-2962 / [email protected]

SOURCE BlogWorld & New Media Expo