Twitter revealed a re-engineered version of its website today at a press conference. According to Twitter’s blog, the new and improved interface features:

New design:
The site has a cleaner timeline and a rich details pane that instantly adds more impact to individual Tweets while still maintaining the simplicity of the timeline. And, experience infinite scroll — you no longer have to click “more” to view additional Tweets.

Media:
Now, it’s easy to see embedded photos and videos directly on Twitter, thanks to partnerships with DailyBooth, deviantART, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, TwitVid, USTREAM, Vimeo, yfrog, and YouTube.

Related content:
When you click a Tweet, the details pane shows additional information related to the author or subject. Depending on the Tweet’s content, you may see: replies, other Tweets by that user, a map of where a geotagged Tweet was sent from, and more.

Mini profiles:
Click a username to see a mini profile without navigating from the page, which provides quick access to account information, including bio and recent Tweets.

These changes will roll out as a preview over the next several weeks starting with a very small percentage of registered accounts today. During the preview, users will be able to switch back and forth so they have time to grow accustomed to the way things work. Eventually, everyone will have the updated version of Twitter.com.

Life In A Day is a historic global cinematic experiment aimed at creating a user-generated feature film. On July 24th, you have 24 hours to capture a glimpse of your life on camera. Video submissions will be accepted from July 24th – July 31st. The most compelling submissions will be edited into a documentary film, produced by Ridley Scott and directed by Kevin MacDonald.

The documentary film will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2011 and will also be available on YouTube. If your submission makes it into the finished film, you’ll be credited as a co-director. 20 people will be chosen from the list of co-directors to be flown to the Sundance Film Festival to celebrate the premiere!

For more details on guidelines, ideas and how to submit your video, check out the Life In A Day YouTube channel.

How can you participate?

• Meetup Everywhere Mashable: Sign up to attend an event on the Meetup Everywhere Mashable – There are more than 600+ meetups in 93 countries today with thousands of attendees.
• Watch the live streams worldwide: Mashable will be updating throughout the day.
• Tweet: Use the #smday hashtag on Twitter . With so many participating, it should be a trending topic on Twitter on June 30. Also, Mashable will award a prize for those that tweet or post to 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 telling what you’re doing for your event.
• Upload to Flickr : Upload photos to Flickr and tag them with #smday.

A message from Pete Cashmore, founder of Mashable.com:

Worldwide Social Media Day

5. Not respecting the English language
If ur over da age of 16, don’t type like dis. K?

4. Entrapment
We’ve all seen them – passive-aggressive, cry for attention, cryptic status updates.

3. Public Indecency
In one word, oversharing. No one (besides you) really cares if your toddler pooped on the toilet for the first time.

2. Contributing to Delinquency of Friends Lists
We weren’t friends in high school, so WHY are you requesting to be my friend now?

1. Willful Unauthorized Distribution
I don’t want to be in your Mafia family, I don’t care about your Farmville crops, and I really don’t care which 1980’s Hit Song your latest quiz says describes your life.

Read the whole article here. What are your top Facebook pet peeves?

Here is what the new feature looks like:

This new enhancement will help to provide Facebook fan page administrators more useful information into how many people their posts are reaching as well as insight into what types of content their fans find most compelling in just one click.

Pepsi’s bold move marks the first time since 1987 that the brand will not advertise in the Super Bowl.  I applaud Pepsi for recognizing the value of an ongoing initiative that has the potential to create lasting impact, rather than spending the same amount of money on one day’s worth of ads during the Super Bowl. It will be interesting to watch the buzz surrounding not only the campaign, but also around individual and business promotion of the idea submissions once voting begins.

Check out Pepsi Refresh on Facebook and the Pepsi Refresh blog, or submit your own idea here.

1. Craigslist expands outside San Francisco (2000)
In 2000, the free classifieds site broadened its reach outside of San Francisco into nine additional U.S. cities, sending chills down the spines of newspaper publishers everywhere. Today Craigslist serves free listings in more than 500 cities in 50 countries, serving as a model for no-frills business and community success and the catalyst for countless jobs, apartments, and just about anything else you can think of.

2. Google AdWords launches (2000)
With the launch of AdWords in October 2000, Google turned advertising on its head. The self-service ad program opened up the marketplace to any business, no matter how big or small, and allowed advertisers to target their customers with laser-sharp precision.

3. Wikipedia launches (2001)
Containing 20,000 articles in 18 languages by the end of its first year online, Wikipedia today boasts more than 14 million articles in 271 different languages. The free open-source encyclopedia epitomizes the Internet’s power to bring strangers from around the world together to collaborate on projects both big and small.

4. Napster Shut Down (2001)
Although Napster was shut down in 2001, it opened the file-sharing floodgates. Its demise sparked a wave of innovations that forever changed how we obtain and experience music and video – from Hulu to iTunes to Radiohead famously dropping its label and self-distributing their “In Rainbows” CD online for free.

5. Google IPO (2004)
Google’s IPO, one of the largest in history, put the six year old search engine on the path to becoming the most dominant and influential company of the decade. From gmail and YouTube to Google Earth, Google Maps, and Google Android, the Internet giant and constant innovator is the engine that powers countless aspects of our everyday lives.

6. Online video revolution (2006)
In 2006, a perfect storm of faster bandwidth, cheaper camcorders, and the groundbreaking use of Adobe’s Flash 9 video player by YouTube combined to launch the online video revolution. The trifecta led to a boom in homemade and professional content – the Diet Coke and Mentos guys, lonelygirl15, SNL’s Lazy Sunday, and Senator George Allen’s “macacagate” – that has reshaped everything from pop culture to politics.

7. Facebook opens to non-college students and Twitter takes off (2006)
In September 2006, a social networking site for college students changed its user qualifications to include anyone 13 and older with a valid e-mail address. Facebook struck an immediate chord — and almost overnight, social media went mainstream. Less than a month later, the creators of Twitter acquired the company and its assets from its investors, paving the way for the service to take off in 2007. Both companies took social media mainstream, radically changing the way we connect, collaborate, and communicate with everyone from friends to colleagues to customers.

8. The iPhone debuts (2007)
The iPhone was released on June 29, 2007. By the end of the weekend, half a million had been sold, and smartphones had gone from a luxury item to a necessity. The iPhone inspired the development of operating systems like Google Android, as well as an app for just about every aspect of modern life. Over the next decade, it’s estimated that a billion new users will come to the Internet for the first time through mobile devices.

9. U.S. Presidential Campaign (2008)
The Internet altered presidential politicking in 2008 much as television had forty years earlier during the Kennedy/Nixon race. From videos like “Obama Girl” and the Reverend Wright clip shaping the debate, to social media mobilizing voters, to record-breaking online fundraising from small donors, every facet of the way campaigns are run was permanently transformed.

10. Iranian election protests (2009)
When Iran’s 2009 presidential election produced fishy results, the opposition took to the tweets — and the “Twitter Revolution” was born. In fact, it was so vital to organizing demonstrations that the U.S. State Department asked the company to delay planned maintenance.. The protests also highlighted Twitter’s key asset as a protest tool: Since most users don’t access it through a central website, it’s nearly impossible to censor.

In Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business, Erik Qualman depicts how social media is transforming the way we live our lives and do business – and backs it up with real world statistics, social media success stories as well as failures, and adds in his own opinions and commentary.

Most of the books written about social media that I’ve read are either basic reference guides to social media terms and platforms or are after-the-fact accounts of social media case studies. Qualman’s book combines these approaches and takes them to the next level with applied thinking as to what businesses should be doing to adapt to this shift in communication and the importance of interaction between businesses and individual consumers.

In my opinion, this is one of the best books currently written about social media. It’s a quick read, incorporates great case studies and statistics, arms those of us who work in social media with information to help make the case for social media to clients, addresses the always popular question of social media and ROI, and most importantly, gets readers thinking about new ways to employ the powerful social media platforms that already exist.

For more information about the author, check out his blog, or even better, go buy and read his book.

Check out the below video from Qualman’s blog for some interesting statistics illustrating the power of social media:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8&feature=player_embedded]

Highlights from the video:

1. By 2010 Generation Y will out populate Baby Boomers….and 96% of Generation Y has joined a social network
2. 1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media
3. Years to Reach 50 million Users: Radio (38 Years), TV (13 Years), Internet (4 Years), iPod (3 Years)…Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months…iPhone applications hit 1 billion in 9 months.
4. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web
5. 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum
6. % of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees….80%
7. 80% of Twitter usage is outside of the Twitter.com domain.
8. Generation Y and Z don’t consider email to be important…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen
9. The #2 largest search engine in the world is YouTube
10. Current existing number of blogs: over 200,000,000
11. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content
12. 34% of bloggers post opinions about products & brands
13. 25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video on their phone
14. 24 of the 25 largest newspapers are experiencing record declines in circulation because we no longer search for the news, the news finds us.
15. More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared daily on Facebook.

It seems as though there are dozens of new “Social Media Experts” emerging online every day. In fact, a recent search of Twitter returned over 5,000 self-proclaimed “Social Media Experts.” What makes someone an “expert” in social media? And, is it even possible to be an “expert” in a space that is constantly evolving?

While there is no clear cut way to define a “Social Media Expert,”  there are qualifications that businesses should look for when hiring an agency or individual to partner with in their social media initiatives.

They have experience in relevant fields.

They understand technology, digital marketing, public relations, customer support, media, SEO, analytics and mobile – and they understand that social media is the convergence of these disciplines.

They have social media experience.

They can provide you with several case studies (including results) in which they have strategized, planned and successfully executed social media programs for clients.

They have a social media team.

They have a team dedicated to social media instead of one person who, because he has a Twitter account, is their go-to social media “expert”.

They are recognized as thought leaders in the industry.

They speak at conferences, are interviewed as “experts” by the media and can provide you a list of clients that they have worked with on social media initiatives.

They have applied knowledge of social media.

They are familiar with the most widely known tools and technologies and they participate in social media themselves (as an agency and as individuals). And they didn’t start participating a month before they pitched you.

They empower you.

They send you POVs, white papers and articles on technologies, best practices and specific case studies within the social media space. They make sure you understand social media and they ensure that your legal team is satisfied before executing any social media program.

They understand that social media is a long term commitment.

They don’t collect thousands of dollars from you, set up a Facebook Fan Page and disappear.

They don’t want you to do social media just because everyone else is doing it.

They work with you to define objectives and to align relevant social media recommendations with those objectives. They are able to tell you how the recommendations they make will benefit your brand, product or service as well as meet the defined objectives.

As the digital space continues to grow and evolve, so will business use of social media. While this list is not exhaustive, it will help ensure that the social media partner you choose will empower you to evolve your brand, product or service as well.