South by Southwest Interactive Festival 2012: What Titillated the Technorati in Austin?

Massive queues for SXSW events, but at least you can play with your phone while you wait! Photo credit: Geoff Livingstonhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/geoliv/6828260696/

Heavy rain downpours in Texas did not dampen techies, start-up entrepreneurs and social media geeks enthusiasm for Austin’s South by South West Interactive festival. Attendees thronged to SXSW in search of the next big thing or in the hope of becoming the next best thing. Social network Twitter debuted at the festival in 2007, Foursquare in 2010. SXSW gave out some prizes, but who were the tech commentariat’s stars of 2012?

The desire to make an impression at SBSW can lead to some controversial ideas, such as marketing company Bartle Bogle Hegarty’s plan to use the homeless as hotspots that caused an outcry last week.

Social discovery apps. The Star.com reported that social discovery apps, which help form connections with people around you, such as Highlight, Kismet, Glancee, Sonar and Ban.jo, all garnered good buzz at the festival. But there were reservations surrounding the risk to privacy (many people are still wary about apps which reveal their location to strangers) and battery life (these apps are always on in the background and so run down your battery). “Cool or creepy?” asked the Huffington Post.

“Ambient discovery — tapping into rich and invisible layers of data to turn the smartphone into a kind of dowsing rod that can discover interesting things nearby — is a theme that is not likely to go away” opined Jenna Wortham at The New York Times.

Sports apps. Blogger Calvin Ly reported from an R/GA talk that revealed that, in the near future, sports fans will be able to use tablets such as the iPad to view matches from multiple points of view, including from spectator’s devices, to ask questions at press conferences from their mobiles and wear Nike+ FuelBand to monitor their own athletic achievements.

Curation apps. The BBC and the New York Times discerned a trend for “curation” apps, like Pinterest, where people assemble interesting things, like on an old-fashioned noticeboard.

All buzzed out? Jenna Wortham in the New York Times reported that “there wasn’t a single standout service that had attendees in a tizzy,” and that “mainstream success doesn’t rely as heavily on wooing the digerati first.” The Province Blogger John Biehler said he might not attend next year because “SXSW has outgrown Austin … It’s just gotten too big. It used to be lineups for the hot parties. But now it’s lineups for everything.”