“Tubefilter has been covering the online video industry before it was really an industry,” Baldwin (pictured) tells FishbowlLA via telephone, ahead of the arrival from New York of Tubefilter co-founder and fellow SMWLA mastermind Joshua Cohen. “We identified what we thought was sort of the professional cross-section of online video. Not the cat videos, but people who are really trying to put something out there intentionally. We pulled together a community of online video producers in LA and New York and from that, built out a major monthly events component.”

Baldwin is currently working with Dick Clark Productions on the next edition of the Streamy Awards, set for February 2013. The launch of Tubefilter in 2008 and the Streamys in 2009 has positioned him as the perfect person to take Social Media Week LA to the next level. He was on the Board of Advisors last year and cleverly, for 2012, has deliberately located the bulk of SMWLA events within the boundaries of Hollywood proper. (io/LA and The Egyptian Theater are two event hubs, for example.)

“We’ve really focused on both the programmatic and geographic elements of entertainment in Hollywood,” Baldwin explains. “As a result, we’ve gotten a lot more traction.” He says they got yes’s from the first 25 people they approached to be a part of SMWLA’s first annual list of “Social 25” digital influencers. The inaugural group will be feted on opening night and includes everyone from Jeff Berman (NFL) and Kevin Smith (SmodCo) to Ryan Seacrest and Zooey Deschanel (for her website Hello Giggles).

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