On June 30th 2010 the popular social media / tech site Mashable initiated Global Social Media Day, with events being held in over 90 countries worldwide – including Japan.

Organised by the boys over at Poken, Social Media Day Tokyo featured a great line of speakers including Shoko Tanaka, Eri Yatsuzuka, Dean Fujii, Johan Rooms, Gary Bremermann, Fujio Suzuki, fujiosuzuki, Yukie Doi, Noboru Takahashi, Michael Q Todd, Masa Kawamukai, Rui Pedro Caramez, Rob Van Nylen …and an excitable guy dressed in a bunny costume.

It was inspiring to hear of concrete examples of how social media is being utilised to make a difference – take for example Gary Bremermann’s Beers for Books supporting Room to Read in its work to provide books for children worldwide (Beers for Books actually passed the 70,000 book mark at this event).

The event also demonstrated  just how young this industry is, and how much we have yet to figure out.

And of course, by the time we do figure it out everything will have changed in any case.