Social Media Week Hong Kong officially opened today marking the city's second year of participation in this global dialogue that brings together the online community offline and connects people, content and conversations around emerging trends in social media.

This year's Social Media Week is taking place in 12 cities across the world at the same time, and last year in Hong Kong alone brought together 2,300 attendees across 38 events with online conversation generating over 400,000 tweets – the impact is expected to be even bigger this year.

From today until 17 February, more than 40 ‘hub' events and a number of partnering events will take place across Hong Kong focusing on all aspects of social media trends, including the best practices in the industry to create social media campaigns for both corporations and NGOs, to the best use of social media tools as well as a dedicated session on social media trends in China.

This year's programme also features a "How to" series looking at everything from building a social network, creating a successful media competition, to creating Facebook Apps.

At the end of each day, leading Hong Kong Tweeter, Jay Oatway, will recap the highlights from the day which will be live streamed during a number of themed social events including StartupsHK Pitch Night, a Valentine's Day special of Dating + Twitter = DWITTER, and a quiz night where Fashion Brands and Fashion bloggers come head to head.

"Social Media Week highlights Hong Kong's unique position as connector, fusing the social media scenes of the West and China. Where else in the world can you find the skills to seamlessly navigate social media platforms from both cultures to the benefit of brands, corporations and non-profits," commented Sarah Woodhouse, Group Managing Director of Cohn&Wolfe-impactasia.

During the opening press conference, some of the 22 advisory board members, who make up Hong Kong's most influential digerati, identified the top trends that will shape social and mobile media over the coming year, including:

• Freedom of Speech vs Content Filtering on Social Media
• Ease of Use vs Business Practice
• VISUAL social sharing and the ascendancy of tumblr, instagram and pinterest
• Social curation in the shopping space
• Capturing opportunities of the realtime social conversation 
• Social influence as the new currency
• Increase of importance played on social media by Hong Kong businesses and increase of in-house teams dedicated to social media
• Print ads and traditional forms of advertising start to migrate to social media heavily
• The new trendsetters will be the ones with the most social media followers or ones that will equal those of celebrities

SMWHK is grateful to the support of the Hong Kong community, and its Official Partners and Event Partners.

The Wall Street Journal Asia returns as City Partner Sponsor and Official Business Newspaper; as the global headline sponsor, Nokia is also supporting SMWHK and Facebook is the official opening cocktail sponsor.

Media partners include Time Out Hong Kong, Marketing Magazine and Jing Daily.

Venue partners include Pure Soho, Bisous, KEE Club, Harbour City, and The Den. Supporting event partners include "I love Hong Kong" and "Rackspace".

City Partner Cohn&Wolfe-impactasia and its Advisory Board members hail from a range of industries and networks to help support event curation.

The Advisory Board members include:

Kay Bayliss, Executive Director, Asia Digital Marketing Association; Napoleon Biggs, Senior Vice President, Head of Digital Integration Asia Pacific Fleishman-Hillard; Bonnie Chan Woo, CEO of Icicle Group and founder of Handheld Culture; Jennifer Cheng, President and Co-Founder, Glamabox; Glen Chu, Director, Digital Butter; Francis Fong, President, HKITF, Chairman, HKAIM, GM, Synergy; Bess Hepworth, Founder & Consultant, Bonza Pie Coaching & Performance Consultancy; Amie Hibbard and Shea Stanley, Little Steps Hong Kong, Founders of online parenting network; Raffi Kamalian, COO, alivenotdead.com; David Ketchum, President, Asia Pacific Bite Communications, Chairman, Asia Digital Marketing Association; Christina Ko and Virginia Ngai, Founders of HKFashionGeek; Howard Kwong, CFO, Handheld Culture; Casey Lau, Co-Founder of Popcorn Media Network, Hong Kong's first blog network; Yeelim Lee, Associate Director, Ogilvy Public Relations; Rudi Leung, Renowned digital strategist, blogger, and online strategy developer; Jocelyn Liipfert, Digital Director, TBWA; Jay Oatway, Journalist, consultant and leading Hong Kong Twitterer; Joanne Ooi, CEO of internet ecommerce startup, Plukka.com; Karen Tam, Assistant General Manager - Promotions and Marketing, Harbour City; and, Jeremy Woolf, Senior Vice President, Global Digital & Social Media Practice Lead, Text 100.



PHOTO CAPTION: Social Media Week Advisory Board members kicks off SMWHK at Opening Press Conference. From left to right: Casey Lau, Co-Founder of Popcorn Media Network; Jay Oatway, Journalist, consultant and leading Hong Kong Twitterer; Rudi Leung, Renowned digital strategist, blogger, and online strategy developer; Francis Fong, President, HKITF, Chairman, HKAIM, GM, Synergy; Joanne Ooi, CEO of internet ecommerce startup, Plukka.com.